About

Born in Israel 1982, Vanessa studied painting and sculpture for three years at Charles Cecil Studios in Florence. Now she lives and works in west London, working half on commissions and half towards exhibitions. She makes work using a mixture of life sittings and photographs on many subjects, including portraits and conversation pieces, nudes, landscapes in oil, bronze and plaster sculptures, works on paper in charcoal, pen and ink.

The training in the ‘sight-size’ technique learnt in Italy has served as a foundation to build her own approach, which has given way to a much more flexible style and application. She spent time painting and sculpting abroad in Europe, Africa and South America, also a three month long sculpture apprenticeship with the South African sculptor Dylan Lewis in Stellenbosch.

Her most recent solo show ‘And Is it True? It is Not True’ at Rook and Raven Gallery revealed a new direction in her work. The exhibition was a culmination of over four years work and these storytelling paintings reflected on the moral ambiguity and conflict found in children’s literature and how their narratives express timeless truths of human nature.

She is currently working towards an exhibition of life size male nude portraits.

Her portrait of Francesca Hayward, principal dancer at the Royal Ballet, was selected to show at the National Portrait Gallery as a part of the BP Portrait Award 2018.

This year her portrait of ‘Marcus’, which is a life sized full length male nude painting, has been selected to show in the BP Portrait Award 2019 and will be showing at the National Portrait Gallery between June 2019 and Sept 2019 before travelling on to other galleries in the UK in 2020.

This year she is also collaborating with Royal Ballet dancers and choreographers on work which connects dance and painting – this will be a short performance in the Paul Hamyln Hall, Royal Opera House, on July 28th 2019.

exhibitions etc:

BP Portrait Award 2019 National Portrait Gallery

BP Portrait Award 2018 National Portrait Gallery

Dec 2015 ‘Whipsers’ Ronchini Gallery

Sept 2015 ‘And Is It True? It is Not True’ Solo Exhibition, Rook and Raven Gallery London

Sept 2014 ‘Degree of Darkness’ group exhibition, Rook and Raven Gallery, Wall St review

2006 BP Award at the National Portrait Gallery, winning the Visitors Choice Award

Wall street international article

Bright Young Things, group show at Cosa London 2007

London Art Fair 2008 with Aretha Campbell Fine Art

The Other Side of Green, solo show, curated by Aretha Campbell Fine Art, 2010

too see a full exhibition catalogue go to http://www.arethacampbellfineart.com/image/othersideofgreen/other_side_of_green.pdf