We last wrote about Alex Venezia in 2021, ahead of his first solo exhibition at Arcadia Contemporary. A lot has happened since then, and the effects can be seen in the new body of work he will be presenting in his second show at the New York gallery, which runs March 6 to 30.
A Heavy Weight, oil on panel, 26 x 32½"
Nearly two years ago, Venezia and his wife Divya Melaluca, also an artist, uprooted their life in Raleigh, North Carolina, and moved to Lyme, Connecticut, where Divya enrolled in a year-long drawing program at the town’s historic fine art academy, and Venezia was asked to teach.
Many biographies about Venezia detail how the artist eschewed traditional academy training, fearing he would come out painting like everyone else, and opting instead to study under “artists with distinct styles.” He did a stint at Odd Nerdrum’s fabled artist compound in Norway and later, in the U.S., worked with Daniel Sprick, Colleen Barry, Jeff Hein and John de la Vega. In 2018, he moved to Raleigh where he was invited by Michael Klein, Louis Carr and Joshua LaRock to paint at East Oaks Studio.
Indecision, oil on panel, 19 x 25"
Painting alongside these artists marked a pivotal point in his career. “After spending time at Odd’s, and at East Oaks Studio, my aesthetic decisions kind of clicked,” Venezia explains. “Spending time in those beautiful places, surrounded by such great work, just being a sponge around all that beauty…what I wanted to paint and how I wanted to paint it, just clicked.”
Venezia clarifies that he was never opposed to academy training, it just wasn’t financially feasible at the time he was exploring that route. But Venezia’s largely self-taught path has served him well, and now he finds himself at the storied Lyme Academy of Fine Arts where, through teaching painting from life, he is taking his exquisite, melancholic and timeless figurative works to the next level.
The Sea & the Rhythm, oil on panel, 42 x 26"
The relative spaciousness of the New England landscape has fostered an expansiveness in his work and vision. “Where we lived in North Carolina, there were so many trees, it felt like you couldn’t really see the sky unless you looked straight up,” he says. In his last show at Arcadia, he was starting to branch out into outdoor figurative scenes but “in this new body of work, the backgrounds have these vast, large areas of sky,” he says. “I’ve been feeling more opened up…I can see further and see the sky more, and that’s found its way into my paintings.”
A more accessible sky also opened up new compositional possibilities. “It made me realize how versatile [the sky] is…you can play with all these shapes and colors. It’s so simple and makes so much sense, but you don’t really know it until you use it.”
The Returning, oil on panel, 40 x 32"
The introduction of nudes, as in The Sea & the Rhythm and The Returning, is also reflective of his time at Old Lyme, where he has had the opportunity to intently study human anatomy and work with professional models who are passionate about what they do. “One thing I’ve found interesting and challenging [about painting nudes] is how to make a figure flow from head to toe without it feeling too broken up into separate parts,” he says. “The idea is to have this flow of continuity throughout the whole figure, while still feeling those moving parts underneath.”
Eclipse, oil on panel, 21 x 15"
Perhaps the most significant shift in Venezia’s approach is learning how to let go of control in order to exert control. Whereas he used to seek out a model that looked interesting, put them in clothes that he liked and “hope for the best,” he is now working from an inner vision, rather than letting the external dictate the scene. He also realized he could treat the subject and the background as completely separate elements. The Sea & the Rhythm originated from a mental picture of two women holding seashells to each other’s ears. One model posed for both figures in his north-lit studio on the Lyme Academy campus; and the sea in the background was based on sketches of the Australian coast.
Girl with Pillow (Dreaming), oil on panel, 18 x 12"
“Before, everything had to be perfect in that one image,” he says. “To me that felt too controlled and I didn’t feel like a real artist. Breaking it up and being in charge of the idea and the image, and teaching myself how to do that has been a big part of [creating for] this show.” —
Arcadia Contemporary 421 W. Broadway • New York, NY 10012 • (646) 861-3941 • www.arcadiacontemporary.com
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