Acts of Serenity Series
Chapel Hill Public Library | September 16 – November 15, 2026
ARTIST: Renzo Ortega
Acts of Serenity is an ongoing series of still lifes that arises from stimulating ideas through observation and introspection. To achieve multidimensionality within the formal tradition of oil easel painting, I carefully choose and set up the objects I paint. I work in silence, without audio or music distractions beyond the studio’s ambient sounds, and pay attention to my posture and placement in relation to the object I paint, forming a unit with the canvas and the easel. Painting is a physical experience; my process helps to create an environment where I can materialize the intangible, capturing the essence of what I see and experience.
I have spent decades painting from intuition, fantasy, and symbolic narrative; this body of work takes a different approach and gives me freedom, allowing me to open new doors in my work. The paintings invite the viewer to an alternative world, a better one, where I seek to receive and embrace the viewer.
I think of art as a human essence, born from one’s inner being and linked to the development of thought and the spiritual. Since the beginning, painters have forged painting from a mystical path, achieving pictorial development through discipline and mastery of the craft. In the Acts of Serenity series, I seek to embody a continuous mantric repetition of a physical-mental exercise, such as painting.
Learn more in this Instagram Reel.
