Jean Arena Has Solo Show At The Remsenburg Academy

Jean Arena is an artist who recently moved to Remsenburg after spending most of her adult life in Manhattan where she worked as an art director and creative director in the field of advertising.

Now, she is having a solo exhibition of her oil paintings at The Remsenburg Academy. The show opens with a reception on Friday, August 16, from 4 to 6 p.m. and includes Ms. Arena’s portraits, landscapes and flowers, all based on painting the light.

“In the last two years living here, I have been inspired by the incredible color and light … the chaos and the calm,” Ms. Arena said. “It changes your mood and is so awesome and overwhelming at times, especially when a storm is coming or the first light is breaking through.

“The feeling is spiritual, especially when you are alone in the midst of it. It is something beautiful to capture.

Ms. Arena always enjoyed drawing, but recalls that she began painting in oils the day her father came home with an artist’s box filled with tubes of paint, brushes and canvases.

“I was 13, and I have been painting since then,” she said.

Ms. Arena, who has an art degree from Rosemont College, also studied film and advertising at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

“I also studied faux painting and gilding at the Isabel O’Neill Studio in New York and then at the Tania Vartan Academy in Florence for a summer session,” she said. “Finally, I spent seven years at The Art Students League studying portrait painting … which was the most challenging.”

Portrait painting is where she felt most inspired, not only by the physical characteristics of her model, but in capturing who that person really is.

“The posture, the expression, what thoughts were going on ... happiness, calm, sadness, seduction, pride … the emotions we all have, and I tried to have that feeling come through in my painting,” Ms. Arena explained. “I am always working to find the essence of the person and then the challenge to be able to express it.”

Jean Arena’s solo show runs through Labor Day, Monday, September 2, at The Remsenburg Academy, 130 South Country Road, Remsenburg. For more information on the artist’s work, visit jeanarenapaintings.com.