{"id":1846,"date":"2012-04-06T08:00:25","date_gmt":"2012-04-06T15:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/roselinahung.com\/blog\/?p=1846"},"modified":"2024-03-19T00:18:18","modified_gmt":"2024-03-19T07:18:18","slug":"fridays-friends-6-christopher-vena","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/roselinahung.com\/blog\/fridays-friends-6-christopher-vena\/","title":{"rendered":"Fridays & Friends #6 \u2013 Christopher Vena"},"content":{"rendered":"

Happy April! \u00a0This year is zooming by quickly…much faster than first anticipated! \u00a0I’m happy to present my 6th installment of Fridays & Friends. \u00a0This blog feature is quickly turning into a bit of an all girls club, not that there’s anything wrong with that…I can’t help it if I know so many talented and amazing female artists! \u00a0But never being one to exclude, I’m very happy to introduce you to Christopher Vena. \u00a0We go way back, and it’s great to feature a fellow oil painter who also is a portrait artist!<\/p>\n

So without further ado, the talented Mr. Vena…<\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n

\"\"
Christopher Vena - 2nd Ave, Seattle, Oil on canvas, 34 x 30 in, 2009<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Roselina Hung:<\/strong>\u00a0How did we first meet?<\/em><\/p>\n

Christopher Vena:\u00a0<\/strong>We met in Paris while I was studying on exchange at L’\u00c9cole Nationale Sup\u00e9rieure des Beaux-Arts in 2001. One of our professors introduced me to you and Jessica Gabriel<\/a><\/span> because I didn’t know anybody and my French wasn’t great.<\/p>\n

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Christopher Vena - A SoCal Musician (Springtail), Oil on canvas, 18 x 26 in, 2007<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

RH:<\/strong>\u00a0Tell me a bit about yourself…<\/em><\/p>\n

CV:<\/strong>\u00a0I was born in Manassas, VA but was raised in the northern suburbs of San Diego, CA. I received a BFA in Painting from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2003 and studied at ENSBA in Paris on exchange in 2001. I completed an artist-in-residency program at Mano y Mente in Tularosa, New Mexico in 2007. I lived in Seattle, WA until 2010, when I moved to Istanbul, Turkey, where I currently reside.<\/p>\n

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Christopher Vena - Ocean I, Oil on found panel, 26 x 24 in, 2008<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

RH:<\/strong>\u00a0Tell me about your work…<\/em><\/p>\n

CV:\u00a0<\/strong>I use oils. I usually paint from photos that I shoot and edit myself of people I know or places that I’ve lived or traveled. Thematically I like to have some sort of psychological investment in the subject but I’m not always sure where it comes from. Stylistically they are realist but not quite photo-realist; I like there to be an element of painterliness to them.<\/p>\n

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Christopher Vena - Dudes, Oil on canvas, 18 x 30 in, 2007<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

RH:<\/strong>\u00a0What are you currently working on?<\/em><\/p>\n

CV:<\/strong> Lately I am shifting back into painting portraits\/interiors from the landscapes\/exteriors I’d been doing over the last few years. I have a lot of reference photos sitting on my hardrive that I’ve shot over the last few years so I plan on opening them up and messing with them in Photoshop a bit (subtly, I try not to make it obvious). I’m also shooting a lot of reference pics right now so a lot of paintings are still in the planning stages, but I do have a new one that I’ve included in the images for this Q&A (below).<\/p>\n

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Christopher Vena - Pioneer, Oil on canvas, 28 x 20 in, 2012<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

RH:\u00a0<\/strong>Where can people find your work?<\/em><\/p>\n

CV:<\/strong>\u00a0On my\u00a0Facebook<\/a><\/span>\u00a0page, and my website, www.christophervena.com<\/a><\/span>, which is coming soon.<\/p>\n

RH:<\/strong>\u00a0Tell me one fun fact about yourself.<\/em><\/p>\n

CV:<\/strong>\u00a0I can karaoke “War Pigs” by Black Sabbath like nobody’s business.<\/p>\n

Thank you, Chris! \u00a0I think perhaps one of these days, we might have to meet up for a karaoke duel. \u00a0I’ll have to learn some Black Sabbath though. \u00a0You read it here first, folks. \u00a0Stay tuned, coming to you via YouTube…sometime in the future.<\/p>\n

Read past Fridays & Friends posts here<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Happy April! \u00a0This year is zooming by quickly…much faster than first anticipated! \u00a0I’m happy to present my 6th installment of Fridays & Friends. \u00a0This blog feature is quickly turning into a bit of an all girls club, not that there’s anything wrong with that…I can’t help it if I know so many talented and amazing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1853,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"single-with-sidebar","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[138],"tags":[263,275,151,59,57,46],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/roselinahung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/ChristopherVena-2nd-Ave-Seattle.jpg?fit=550%2C625","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/roselinahung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/roselinahung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/roselinahung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roselinahung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roselinahung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1846"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/roselinahung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3288,"href":"http:\/\/roselinahung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846\/revisions\/3288"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roselinahung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/roselinahung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roselinahung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roselinahung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}