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New Spring Paintings
Spring Collection
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Let's Work Together
Private Lessons
Private oil painting lessons provide focused instruction for artist seeking to strengthen their skills. Sessions emphasize core foundations such as value, color, and brushwork. Each lesson is tailored to support individual goals and levels of experience.
Commissions
A limited number of commissions are accepted each year. These original paintings are created using traditional techniques and archival materials to ensure longevity.
Group Workshops
Workshops offer a welcoming environment where artists can learn and paint together. Demonstrations guide participants through the process of portrait painting while introducing essential techniques and principles. Sessions are designed to encourage observation, confidence and thoughtful practice.
To be painted is to be remembered. It is to be told that you belong to history. My work begins with the belief that beauty has no singular face, and that the canvas has always been large enough for everyone, every idea and just a little bit of everything." - Rena
The Artist Behind the Work
Rena
Rena Risby meaning a joyful dwelling among the meadow, is both the family name and studio name of Alexandria Risby, and there is perhaps no more fitting way to describe the world she paints into existence.
A Los Angeles–based painter and art educator, Rena works from her home studio, creating figurative works rooted in Black domestic life, childhood nostalgia, and the quiet romance of the American South. Her practice is shaped by a deep reverence for traditional European technique and the old masters, woven together with the folklore and the dog eared pages of vintage children's book illustrations that captivated her from girlhood.
The result is a body of work that feels at once deeply familiar and entirely its own. As a teaching artist with the City of Los Angeles, Rena brings that same devotion to underserved communities.
Her work exists for anyone who has ever wanted to feel like they belong in a painting, to be seen in a way that goes beyond what a photograph can offer.
"Every portrait I paint is an act of love for the subject, for the craft, and for everyone who has ever longed to see themselves in it."
