Cristina Paulos

Cristina Natsuko Paulos grew up in the San Fernando Valley in Southern California and relocated to Las Vegas in 2002. She works as a professional sign artist and painter, painter, filmmaker, puppet artist, cartoonist, and art teacher, and is a published illustrator.

Paulos received her Bacholars of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts in the Character Animation program in 2006 and left animation in 2009 to work as a full-time artist. As an artist, she incorporates various techniques from her animation studies and applies them to her work to create impressions of movement. Her work focuses on mirror twin characters, life-inspired themes, and female archetypes, as well as portraiture, imagery, and subject matter drawn from real life. She employs surrealist storytelling and often uses the media of painting, puppetry, and animation.

Paulos uses a variety of materials in her art making, including paints, inks, dyes, crafts, handmade papers using recycled paper bags, canvas, wood, and mixed media. During her studies at CalArts, she was reward the Prestigious Sesame Street Award for her original short cartoon for PBS’ Sesame Street Workshop. Her films have screened in film festivals in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Her paintings have been shown in such preeminent locations as Joseph Watson Gallery (Las Vegas), Gallery Nucleus (Los Angeles), Gallery 1988 (Los Angeles), Phantom Galleries (Los Angeles), and Billy Shires’ La Luz De Jesus Gallery (Los Angeles). Her artwork has been recognized and rewarded by the Nevada Art Council. Two of her pieces are a permanent part of the Cirque du Soleil Contemporary Art Collection in Montréal Quebec, Canada and she recently completed an animation short for the Life Is Beautiful Festival in Downtown Las Vegas.