Donna Festa's Intimate Portraits: Small Paintings, Big Emotional Weight

Donna Festa, an artist from Bangor, Maine, creates intricate small oil paintings, often just six inches square, that encourage viewers to take a closer look. Her artwork captures the complexity of the human face, reflecting memory and emotion. This emphasis on smaller pieces is tied to her difficult upbringing, where blending into the background was essential for her. She began her artistic journey as a teen under Patricia Vanaman Witt and later studied with Seymour Remenick at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Festa earned her BFA from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and her MFA from the University of Hartford. Influenced by Goya and Rembrandt, she typically completes pieces in a single session on carefully prepared wood panels. Noteworthy works include 'Yellow Hair,' a four-by-four-inch painting of a woman described as 'a raw nerve.' Her exhibitions have reached cities like New York, San Francisco, and Chicago, and her piece 'Conversation' is part of the State Museum of Pennsylvania's permanent collection. She's also been featured in various publications, including Cleaver Magazine and Fresh Paint Magazine.