Victoria Venditto is an illustrator and painter from Scituate, Rhode Island. This year, Victoria attends her senior year at Salve Regina University where she is pursuing a major in studio art. She has already participated in numerous group exhibitions including Putting it On Paper at the Wickford Art Gallery in 2023 where she received second place for her work, and Emerging Artists 2024 at the Warwick Center for the Arts where she was rewarded with Best in Show (college level). Upcoming exhibitions include the Senior Juried Show at Salve Regina University in May 2025. Venditto currently lives in North Scituate, Rhode Island. 

I have always had a fascination with portraiture and drawing the human face. My earliest works mainly consisted of portraits of friends and family members using materials such as oil pastel, graphite, and colored pencil. I found comfort in seeing the faces of people I love emerge from a two-dimensional surface. The more hours I spent rendering the details of each portrait I created, the more I would see the drawings come to life. As I grew older, the concepts revealed in my portfolio shifted. I broadened my artistic discipline and became more comfortable with acrylic and oil paints. I felt as though the mediums would have a compelling impact on the way I depicted human figures. The art I made went from portraits of familiar faces to portraits filled with what I referred to as, “raw emotion.” There was a darkness to these pieces; a large painting of a young woman laughing to herself, a self-portrait of my mouth covered in a blood-like substance, and mascara running down the face of a girl in distress. 

Portraiture is what I practice most to this day. My process begins long before approaching a blank canvas or piece of paper. Capturing the ideal composition and overall mood of the art comes from taking photographs of people in various spaces. I sometimes use my own facial expressions and poses as a reference as well. The model’s pose and their relationship with the setting around them is crucial for enforcing the audience’s emotional response to the final piece. Using drawing materials and paint to reconstruct the often-bizarre photographs I take are modes of observation, self-expression, and release. I am most drawn to concepts surrounding human emotion, and their relationship with themselves and others. I find immense joy in discovering a complex emotion from deep within myself or others and providing an artistic representation of those feelings to an audience.