Alma Rosalva explores embodiment, stillness, and the emotional resonance of place from her home base on Fir Island in the Skagit Valley, Washington. Surrounded by expansive farm fields and big sky, and drawing from both figurative and landscape traditions, her paintings approach body and land as interconnected terrain—shaped by time, memory, and lived experience.
Rosalva grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and moved north after earning a BA in Art with a minor in Ethnic Studies from Humboldt State University (now Cal Poly Humboldt). She also spent a formative year studying fine art at the University of New Mexico, where her relationship to landscape deepened through immersion in the cultures and environments of the Southwest. Rooted in an early devotion to figure drawing, her work continues to engage the human form as a site of attention, presence, and self-witnessing.
Working primarily in acrylic, Rosalva’s paintings emphasize atmosphere, restraint, and duration. Whether focused on the body or the land, her work resists spectacle in favor of quiet, inward states—inviting viewers to slow down and inhabit moments of rest, gathering, and transition.
She has participated in group exhibitions throughout Skagit and Whatcom Counties since 2023.