Christina Renfer Vogel: Interview

Christina Renfer Vogel, Night Light, 2016, oil, acrylic, and Flashe on linen, 46 x 46 inches (courtesy of the artist)
Christina Renfer Vogel, Night Light, 2016, oil, acrylic, and Flashe on linen, 46 x 46 inches (courtesy of the artist)

Sam King interviews painter Christina Renfer Vogel whose exhibition Home Bodies is on view at the Christensen Art Center at Augsburg College, Minneapolis, MN, through March 23, 2017.

Vogel comments: "Like working from the landscape, plants serve as a vehicle for me to build a painting in a new way, offering unexpected and complex visual information that is pure pleasure to translate through painting. I have paired the plants with patterns in some cases, thinking about the kind of pattern of these living things that extends to decorative backdrops... I am also occupied with the unremarkable, so there is something about the everydayness of houseplants that draws me in. I see potential for a kind of theatricality through staging these tableaus, balanced with a directness that I like to offer through my work. I think it also speaks to my traditional studio-based painting practice; I am bringing all these things from the outside in, filling my space and translating my encounters."