1878 Gallery

November 24, 2018 - January 13, 2019

Opening Reception Saturday, November 24, 2018
6:00 – 9:00 PM
Artist talk at 6:30 PM

Renata Lucia
News vs. Nature (Gulf)

For the exhibition News vs. Nature (Gulf), Renata Lucia’s paintings reflect on the widening social divides that unfold in the current news cycle. Her works incorporate national and local newspapers, including works created specifically for this exhibition that use pages from The Galveston Daily News. Acrylic paint and drawing media are applied to crumpled newspaper pages that are selected for composition and content, resulting in a textured topographical illusion. The intimacy of reading a physical newspaper is contrasted with a detached aerial view. Lucia began the News vs. Nature series considering the organized chaos of nature reigning supreme against the psychological toll of bad news. The series shifted and took on new importance in late 2017 as an epic battle began to rage in our perception and discussion of the news. Lucia’s works consider the questions “Is the news fake or, more likely, a last bastion of truth? Is nature sublime, or does it represent the most disturbing aspects of human nature?”

Native Texan Renata Lucia is influenced by her familial heritage of outsider artists, writers, quilters, embroiderers, miniaturists, and a research scientist. She explores memory, craft, domesticity, and the current socio-political climate through multiple mediums and processes. Her subjects range from traditional quilt patterns in encaustic interlaced with photographic images of unknown persons, to newspapers that have been manipulated to resemble our natural, organic surroundings, to photographs referencing the connectivity between consumerism, advertising, graffiti.

Lucia worked as a classically-trained, professional violist in the 1980’s and ‘90s, followed by a career in technical writing. After a chondrosarcoma diagnosis in 2000, she took her first art class when she joined the Glassell School of Art, MFAH. She became the first trained artist in her family when she graduated there with a Painting specialization.

Her work has been featured twice in the periodical New American Paintings and is part of the public collection of the International Women’s Museum in Marfa, TX. Additionally, she was a resident artist at Houston’s Project Row Houses, and a recent award winner at the 2017 Lawndale Big Show and the 2018 Assistance League of Houston Celebrates Texas Art exhibition. Lucia lives in Houston, TX and works out of her home studio.

www.renatalucia.com