Christina Renfer Vogel holds a MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and a BFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University. In her work, she pursues interaction and perception from her role as observer, interested in the unremarkable and in the relationships that exist within our everyday exchanges. Drawing from the quotidian and familiar, Christina navigates the space between seeing and describing, interpretation and invention. She has exhibited widely, including recent solo exhibitions at Augsburg College (Minneapolis, MN) and the Julia Martin Gallery (Nashville, TN). Christina has participated in artist residencies at the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts (Rabun Gap, GA), the Virginia Center for Creative Arts (Amherst, VA), the Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT), and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts (Nebraska City, NE), and most recently she was an artist-in-residence at JSS in Civita (Civita Castellana, Italy), supported by a Lighton International Artists Exchange Program grant. She is a recipient of an Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grant among other awards. She joined the faculty at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 2013 where she serves as Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing.

In my recent body of work, I stand on the edge, observing interactions. I seek to identify quiet moments from within larger, more complex situations, focusing on chance meetings in groupings and gatherings, and searching for interaction or disconnection.

These placeless figures are suspended in fields of color that serve as psychological spaces. It takes on a presence that is unsettling or cloying or comforting. It presses against them and threatens to swallow them.

There is a directness to this work, and yet, the fragmentary nature and moments left intentionally unresolved suggest a state of uncertainty and flux, inviting you to question the ambiguity of each exchange.

I aim to describe familiar situations that smolder with an underlying tension. These ordinary encounters describe the yearning, discomfort, and uncertainty that feel all too familiar. I hope to draw you in, but keep you at arm’s length.