Vanessa Compton grew up in the woods of Vermont & New Hampshire where her father, a professional singersongwriter, and her artist mother inspired her to start creating at an early age. She devoted her school years to studying theater, sculpture, cello and world music. She spent a semester living in Dakar, Senegal where shestudied the kora and performed with several West African and reggae bands. She fell in love with climbing 15 years ago and moved to the American West graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from CU-Boulder. After living and teaching art in Colorado for nearly a decade Vanessa transitioned to a largely nomadic lifestyle focused on art and climbing. She has climbed extensively throughout the lower 48, France, Greece, and South Africa, making art all along the way on her rest days. Surrealistic landscapes have featured predominantly in my work. Time is meant to be on the loose, with past, present and future existing simultaneously. A major inspiration is migration. I focus on the luxation of figures and structures through landscapes of epic quality and interminable horizons. These are beautiful, dislocated worlds that live behind the gauzy film of dreams. Through collage I birth brave new worlds for discarded paper forms and the creation of these entirely disparate realities weighs on me with humility and wildness. These worlds celebrate lives lived in non-normative existence. These are worlds caught between shifting dimensions, full of myth and contrast! Vanessa currently spends part of the year co-managing a seasonal art gallery in Vermont’s rural Northeast Kingdom and the other guiding in Hueco Tanks State Park & Historic Site and climbing throughout the American West.