Renée Valenti is a Philadelphia-based artist whose practice focuses on painting, and includes photography and writing. Her oil and acrylic abstract paintings use colorful saturated pallets and draw from questions around desire, societal norms, and folklore. The interior spaces and still lifes depict home spaces and hotel rooms. Her work is heavily influenced by cinema and low culture. Valenti’s work is also inspired by the genres of figure painting and early abstraction; as well as fantastical and outlandish sets and films from artists like John Waters, David Lynch, Sofia Coppola, and sets and performances from opera and drag. She graduated from Pratt Institute in 2012 with a BFA in Fine Arts and earned her MFA in Fine Arts at School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2016.

Before making a move to visual art she was a full-time actor in New York City, doing experimental productions of new plays, and classic modern dramas like Sean O’Casey. The ’stage’ of her past is what is behind the odd biomorphic shapes and saturated colors in her paintings.

Valenti’s work has been exhibited at the Charles Allis Museum, Anita Rogers Gallery, Amarillo Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Amos Eno Gallery in Brooklyn, NY.