VM.  So, I’ve known you a long time, Nora, nearly half my life now!  When I first met you, I thought your work was gorgeous…your figure painting showed an understanding – not only of the human form, but of how to describe it in paint, whether it was watercolor studies or longer oil paintings.  I haven’t seen your older work in quite a while, but I’m wondering what are some thoughts that go through your head as you look at your newer paintings next to your older ones.

 

NV: My older figurative work vs newer figurative work… not sure if there’s a difference, what I have done is merge my drawing with my painting – searching for a direction to move, searching for my own mark. I always thought that my approach to drawing the figure was very different from the way I painted the figure, so I gave myself an “assignment”: to do a series of 20 pieces where I draw with paint and try to get the same sense of immediacy and the mark with paint as I did with charcoal and erasers… this was the beginning of Vice Versa, where drawing and painting become one and then the other.  Eventually…along number 15 or so… there was one figure that came to the foreground and this figure was the one I brought to the foreground and modeled it.  Somewhere after I reached number 20, I started to make the layers intertwine, the past and the present, all on the same plane… some metaphor to life I’m sure!  This series has found a life of it’s own, I can’t stop! 

 

VM:  Could you speak a bit about the difference between your approach the to figure in oil versus watercolor?

 

NV: I continue to work in charcoal and also with watercolor, I just feel these two materials are very playful and forgiving. I don’t take my watercolor seriously, I let myself “play” and I’m having a lot of fun with them.

 

VM: Do you remember your first realization that the figure was going to be a lifelong subject matter for you?   Or did you go away from it and come back to it?

NV: I’ve always been in love with drawing and painting the figure, as long as I can remember.  Since the first day I drew from life, sometime in 1975, while a senior in high school I took drawing classes at Cerritos Com College in CA with my long time professor and friend Manuel De Leon.  Then I continued to paint it and here I am today, still drawing and painting the figure… trying to find my way. 

VM: Have you studied with other artists who’ve had a particular impact on you?

NV:  My family moved back to Argentina in the late 70s and while I lived there I studied in the studio of Julio Vanzo, who (in hindsight) has had a tremendous influence in my work.

Back and forth from Argentina to LA and then lastly 25 years ago moved to MI, I finished my BFA at UM and MFA at EMU.  I worked with sculptor Lou Marinaro and painters Jim Cogswell and Margaret Davis in Michigan.

VM:  I always say to you, ” Do those college students know how lucky they are to have you for a professor?”  You are an incredible instructor, no matter the media or subject matter.  

 

NV:  I am very fortunate to work at what I love, I work in my studio and I teach what I do, and not a day feels like work (or whatever that is) .

 

VM:  In Vice Versa 2017, you are exhibiting drawings, studies and massive oil paintings.  I love that you have chosen to exhibit this combination of media, size and pieces in several depths of study – I think it gives gallery visitors a real glimpse into your creative and thought processes. 

 

NV:  It entertains me to hear what people see and how they interpret the paintings, I agree with all of them!

 

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Venturelli’s large-scale paintings in this show are canvases that struggle to contain the forms within them.  That is to say,with the amount of depth she creates, along with the life-sized figurest the canvases start to become their own spaces. To use ‘magic-speak’, they almost become portals to a painted world!  And, yet, she layers the figure in different states of completion and this creates the sense of transparency.  Then there are the colors, which, in true color theory character, provide additional illusions of depth.  

 

Visitors to Vice Versa 2017 will find themselves inhaling with an awed ‘wow’  when they enter the gallery……in spite of their best efforts to remain unfazed.