BIOGRAPHY
Michael de Vena paints the rooms inside us that we don’t show anyone. A multidisciplinary artist of Galician, Portuguese, Jewish, and Shoshone descent, he carries lineages shaped by migration, memory, and the stories passed down in order to survive. That inheritance runs beneath everything he makes, lending his work a weight that feels both ancestral and deeply personal.
Working across acrylic, gouache, watercolor, graphite, and oil pastel, de Vena builds ambiguous, half-lit worlds through symbolic imagery, fragmented narrative, and emotionally charged environments. Figures drift between presence and disappearance, structures appear as fragile as they are solid, and nothing stays quite where you left it. Rather than telling a story, his work operates through atmosphere, implication, and symbolic tension, offering the pieces of a narrative and trusting the viewer to feel their way through. Vulnerability, transformation, isolation, memory, and the quiet endurance of emotional survival surface as fragments of inner experience, familiar enough to recognize and unstable enough to hold the eye.
At its core, de Vena’s practice is an investigation of fracture, ambiguity, and perception, and of the hidden psychological currents that shape how we see ourselves and one another. His work resists fixed interpretation, opening a space where viewers encounter their own associations and, often, their own reflections. It is art that feels less like something you look at and more like something that looks back.
CV
2026
Everything I Couldn’t Say • Poetic Tiger Gallery
Meowtopia II. • Poetic Tiger Gallery
Prowl • Inverarity Gallery, Scotland
Carnival Opera • Poetic Tiger Gallery
2025
Viva le Tigre • Poetic Tiger Gallery
Folkloria • Poetic Tiger Gallery
What the Folk • Anthology Gallery
Ocean Tails • Inverarity Gallery, Scotland
Invisible Threads • Poetic Tiger Gallery
Nautical Horizons • Poetic Tiger Gallery
2024
Enchanted Kingdoms • Poetic Tiger Gallery
The Automata Cycle • Poetic Tiger Gallery
Prism of Perspectives • Poetic Tiger Gallery
Sanctuary of Expressions • Poetic Tiger Gallery
Embracing Allegory • Delia Dante Gallery, ID
Cat and Crow (Sacred Fauna) • Inverarity Gallery, Scotland
2023
Indomitable Spirit • Curio Gallery, Portugal
2020
Cat, Lore & Other Superstitions • Inverarity Gallery, Scotland
2019
Annual Coaster Show • Out of Step Gallery, OR
Gilded Bestiary • Inverarity Gallery, Scotland
2018
Summoning the Muse • Alexi Era Gallery, OR
Tiny Visions • Hive Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Untamed Fauna • Alexi Era Gallery, OR
Feathered Dwellings • Alexi Era Gallery, OR
Catharsis • Alexi Era Gallery, OR
2017
Dia de los Muertos • Maude Kerns Art Center, OR
Aunia Kahn & Michael de Vena – Two-Person Exhibition • Broadway Commerce Center, OR
Aeternus • Alexi Era Gallery, OR
Music Box II • Haven Gallery, Northport, NY
l’Art Nouveau • Alexi Era Gallery, OR
2016
Bestowed Upon Us • Alexi Era Gallery, IL
Little Big II • Haven Gallery, Northport, NY
Epeolatry • Alexi Era Gallery, IL
Honey and Venom • Hive Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Victoriana • Alexi Era Gallery, IL
Ancient Kingdoms • Alexi Era Gallery, OR
Empathic • Alexi Era Gallery, IL
Permanence • Haven Gallery, Northport, NY
2015
Amore Vincit Omnia • Alexi Era Gallery, IL
Celestial (July 2015) • Alexi Era Gallery, IL
INK.² • Tangent Gallery, Detroit, MI
Emanate • Alexi Era Gallery, IL
Magic, Myth, and Lore • Bash Contemporary, San Francisco, CA
2014
Group Exhibition • Red Raven Gallery, Port Townsend, WA
Irrelevant Roots • Thumbprint Gallery, San Diego, CA
Temple of the Soul • Alexi Era Gallery, St. Louis, MO
Panoptic • Alexi Era Gallery, St. Louis, MO
Yours Truly • Alexi Era Gallery, St. Louis, MO
Group Show • Gallery 999, Anaheim, CA
Indelible • Alexi Era Gallery, St. Louis, MO
Mass Culture MCMXX • Alexi Era Gallery, St. Louis, MO
2013
Red Letter • Alexi Era Gallery, St. Louis, MO
Grand Opening Group Exhibition • Alexi Era Gallery, St. Louis, MO
Haunted Icons • Gallery 999, Anaheim, CA
2012
Dia de los Muertos • Olvera Street, Los Angeles, CA
Noircir le Monde • Dominion, Montreal, Canada
Papier • Quartier des Spectacles, Montreal, Canada
2011
Dia de los Muertos • Olvera Street, Los Angeles, CA
DTLA Spring Open • The Brewery, Los Angeles, CA
Winter Exhibition • Richmond Art Center, Richmond, CA
2010
Dia de los Muertos • Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Los Angeles, CA
A Gathering of Tribes – Open Studios • Factory Place, Los Angeles, CA
Between the Boroughs IV • Lost Artifacts Lofts, Brooklyn, NY
Invited Guests • The Painting Center, New York, NY
Cannibal Flower X • Los Angeles, CA