Artist Statement
I am primarily a Portrait artist. In addition I have a huge body of work that is rarely for sale, and describe this work as my “Automatic Drawing”. An artist from childhood I am deeply impacted by work from the 1400s and 1600s. I hold close the method, maybe it was what Michelangelo said in one of his classes, “take a movement that can’t exist as static and combine it with another movement that couldn’t exist at the same time, marrying them together gives a sense of the now static two dimensional work being alive”. Why portraiture? Our loved ones are important, and yet we are extremely motivated by our capitalist society; we value what we see, what we own. To have prominent piece in your home, that which you hold the most dear reinforces what we truly value.
Biography
Biography
Raised in Manhattan, now on a mountain top, working at 7000 feet in the wilds Of Bear Valley, California, Jennifer A. Manetta as a 4 year old started her formal art education, at that time she was moved by the Dutch Masters, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Manetta’s parent’s love of, the cutting edge, of the modern art scene, played a prominent, integrate part of her art embedded education. With grandparents that were Vaudevillians, Manetta’s quiet intense focus of art was supported. Her first formal paid Portrait was at 11 years old, 50 years later it still hangs in the dining room it was intended for. Manetta’s first showing at 10 was at the youth class at SF’s De Young Museum. Her first formal showing at 16 was in the Sausalito Art Fair, moving every two years, being an only child, there she had her first sense of peers. She also had paid gigs as a youth such as sign making for the noted Mill Valley Book Depot. At UCLA Extension sculpting in a stone course, in archaeological illustration course, used soon after, at 17 working at drawing artifacts on (archaeological) diggs in Israel and France, her education continued at many other colleges, drawing in museums, mentors and Art exposures, for brief. Susan Moulton who studied under Thiebaud was a brief but memorable Mentor of hers, modeling for art at Sonoma state, to hear art instruction Manetta's art education continued. She has gone on to paint many prominent people for example, “I have such illustrious portraits under my belt as the esteemed opera conductorJohn Fiore, as commissioned by his late partner principal oboist with the SF ballet Orchestra Bill Banovetz. Mary Turnbull’s commission of her late husband Herbert Beckman.”
Raised in Manhattan, now on a mountain top, working at 7000 feet in the wilds Of Bear Valley, California, Jennifer A. Manetta as a 4 year old started her formal art education, at that time she was moved by the Dutch Masters, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Manetta’s parent’s love of, the cutting edge, of the modern art scene, played a prominent, integrate part of her art embedded education. With grandparents that were Vaudevillians, Manetta’s quiet intense focus of art was supported. Her first formal paid Portrait was at 11 years old, 50 years later it still hangs in the dining room it was intended for. Manetta’s first showing at 10 was at the youth class at SF’s De Young Museum. Her first formal showing at 16 was in the Sausalito Art Fair, moving every two years, being an only child, there she had her first sense of peers. She also had paid gigs as a youth such as sign making for the noted Mill Valley Book Depot. At UCLA Extension sculpting in a stone course, in archaeological illustration course, used soon after, at 17 working at drawing artifacts on (archaeological) diggs in Israel and France, her education continued at many other colleges, drawing in museums, mentors and Art exposures, for brief. Susan Moulton who studied under Thiebaud was a brief but memorable Mentor of hers, modeling for art at Sonoma state, to hear art instruction Manetta's art education continued. She has gone on to paint many prominent people for example, “I have such illustrious portraits under my belt as the esteemed opera conductorJohn Fiore, as commissioned by his late partner principal oboist with the SF ballet Orchestra Bill Banovetz. Mary Turnbull’s commission of her late husband Herbert Beckman.”