Miriam Vega’s paintings pull from the imaginative worlds of video games, manga and music, adapting themes from their surreal places and characters into a fantastical landscape of her own. Vega uses the canvas to cultivate a dreamscape diary to confront personal identity. The loose strokes and seemingly unfinished nature of the paintings and the stylized portraiture featuring manga characters are intentional presentations of vague memory and feeling associated with the artist and her reference media. This stylized manga character design utilized in video games influences the fashioning of her own characters. The characters act as expansions of the artist’s self, suggesting the inner conflict that accompanies the physical body versus the imagined versions of the self. Vega’s paintings elicit a particular mood of escapism through the lighthearted and colorful imagery. The dreamy atmosphere lightly veils the complex feelings on spirituality, regret, failure, and uncertainty.

Miriam Vega (b. 1993, El Paso, TX) received her B.F.A from The University of Texas at El Paso. Her solo exhibit titled Angel Stride (2025) was exhibited at Super Ultra Nova gallery. Vega has been featured in multiple group exhibitions, most recently at Super Ultra Nova, Tinta Sangre Gallery, and Crossland Gallery. Vega lives and works in El Paso, TX.