Artist to Watch: Jenna DeAngelis - Inside Art With Michael Rose

Artist to Watch: Jenna DeAngelis - Inside Art With Michael Rose

 

It is rare for an artist early in their career to develop a voice that is tangibly their own and that also bears a recognizable and well-formed aesthetic. For Rhode Island painter Jenna DeAngelis, her stylistic tendencies speak volumes and make for direct and endearing artworks. From her studio in Warren, DeAngelis is creating paintings that explore narrative and form in off-the-beaten-path ways. She is an artist to watch.

GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST

 

DeAngelis is originally from Barrington and has been working out of a studio in an historic mill at 30 Cutler Street in Warren since shortly after she graduated from Rhode Island College. At RIC, Jenna earned a BFA in Painting and also took an interest in art history. She was also an honors student and the recipient of a DeStefano Undergraduate Research Scholarship, which she used to explore process. Today she tends towards paintings in oil alongside some acrylics that she executes on canvases she stretches herself.

 

 

Many of DeAngelis’ artworks lead viewers into fascinating and mysterious storylines. In one, a horse covered in a blanket trots across the foreground of a wooded scene, in another painting that has a spectral effect a dog sits in front of a window, in still another a hummingbird flies above flowers rendered in a direct style. Her paintings are highly textured, and show the signs of the layers of paint that the artist lavishes on them.

 

Describing what she hopes viewers see when looking at her work, DeAngelis says, “I hope my paintings welcome a sense of familiarity for my viewers and that they can relate to what something looks like and feels like. My work has an element of abstraction, and I hope to encourage the viewer to participate in unfolding the narrative. There is a humanness to making and looking at art and I want that connection to come through.”

 

 

DeAngelis pairs her active studio practice with a job as an art teacher, instructing students aged 4-6. She describes working with children as “blissful” and says that the kids she teaches make her appreciate intuitiveness in art-making. She is also on the staff of the RISD Museum, where she can be found monitoring the galleries.

 

Asked about what it means to her to be an artist in the Ocean State, DeAngelis says, “The influence growing up in Rhode Island has on my work is something I appreciate more and more. As the seasons change, the shifting landscape tends to find its way into my paintings. I am very grateful to live by the ocean and to be influenced by its vastness and mystery.”

 

 

The land appears in a number of DeAngelis’ current paintings, as do animals, or abstracted forms of recognizable objects like cell phones. In her studio, she also has drawings in crayon alongside experimental collages. She sometimes works directly on the floor, and might also include dirt or sand in her paint to increase the texture and impact of its appearance.

 

Considering her positive attachment to Warren, where she makes her paintings, DeAngelis describes the quality of working in a studio in the town by saying, “I love working in Warren. Just by wandering around the town, you will run into so much art, whether it’s painted along the sides of a building or placed in a window. The town encourages the arts and it is very welcoming, two things that are really important to me.”

 

The artist’s studio is packed with influences, from vintage children’s books to toys and figurines. Alongside these items, there are pages from calendars mixed with DeAngelis’ drawings, which are significant for their direct and unfiltered style. She is constantly working and experimenting with new images and directions.

 

 

A promising young artist with close ties to Rhode Island, DeAngelis represents the best of the state’s younger generation of painters. She was recently featured in the Bristol Art Museum Exhibition A Small Point of Land, which focused on artists and artworks drawn from the East Bay. Additionally, she showed her work in RISD’s 2023 Staff Show at Woods Gerry Gallery and has shared her artworks as far afield as Tennesee. There will undoubtedly be plenty more exhibitions in this gifted painter’s future.

 

DeAngelis is hopeful for the future of her career. Laying out her aims for her life as an artist, she states, “The most important thing for me is to keep painting and making work and staying true to the kind of artist that I am. I look forward to opportunities to show my work and to teach.”

 

Follow Jenna DeAngelis on Instagram at @jenna.deangelis.