Karina Gonzalez
Artist Renee Amitai recently displayed her work in St.Petersburg, Russia and in June exhibited at the Sorbonne in Paris before becoming involved in the “OFF-PLANET” exhibit at the Pierce College Art Gallery.
Amitai, who was educated Ecole des Beaux Arts de Paris and Ecole Des Metiers D’Artes et Architecture in Paris spent her early career working as an architect in France and for Club Med.
Invited to become the Artist in Residence for San Antonio Art Institute, Amitai moved to the United States in 1984.
She taught at the Art Institute and San Antonio College before migrating from Texas to Los Angeles in 1987.
By 1993, Amitai quit working as an architect and became focused on her art full-time.
Her career led her early works to be very heavily architectural, with a heavy influence on lines and structural designs.
Several years ago she became interested in the discoveries in outer space, and particularly the images that the Hubble Space Telescope was collecting. These discoveries sparked what Amitai described as a desire to paint about “what is going on in the universe.”
While Amitai was aware of the developments in scientific discovery, she is was quick to note that her work was not based on particular images but rather “all my imagination. It is what I feel inside myself.”
Amitai said that the colors that she uses in her paintings represent the changing emotions through a particular period.
She uses bright oranges and reds to show the chaos that her subjects cause her to feel, and then switches to greens and blues during a period of calm. “My colors are always very strong,” Amitai said.
She also began painting on plexi-glass with an extremely high gloss that she developed herself to further experiment with her medium.
Art Gallery curator Mary Oliver noted that the gloss adds something to her work.
“This way really catches you. She makes good use of the media available.”
Moved to another phase in her art, Amitai recently began working on pieces that reflect the new discoveries of “fossils and what is growing up from the Earth.”