Silvana LaCreta Ravena

The connections between psychology and art have been the constant subject of my paintings. became fascinated with this theme during my practice as a clinical psychologist, an experience that helped me to infuse my art with principles based on different lines of thought in psychology. Some Freudian concepts, ideas from the Phenomenology, concepts of the Psychology of Gestalt and some Jungian concepts are particularly important to my artworks. Since I moved to Minnesota, instead of continuing my clinical practice, I have centered my focus exclusively on painting, making it my way of stimulating people?s psychological dynamics. The intention of my work is to make people creatively question what they are seeing, and to make contact with their innermost being. For me, art is a type of embodiment in which experience creates matter. It is a way of awakening perception by addressing the senses directly, which allows better conditions to facilitate the communication between the person and his or her deeper self.

Silvana LaCreta Ravena is a versatile artist who works with oil, resin and encaustic techniques in abstract paintings and sculptural collages that connect psychology and art. She also makes wearable art.

Silvana was educated as a psychologist and also holds degrees in art therapy, art history and a master degree in fine arts. She established her studio in Minnesota in 2006 and, since then, has exhibited widely throughout the US and Europe. She is represented in galleries in Miami, Denver, Minneapolis, Scottsdale and other cities including Lisbon in Portugal. Her art has been featured in several American and European art publications, TV art shows like PBS- Minnesota Original. She has received prizes in both the US and Germany and her works integrate private collections in the USA, EU and Brazil.

Her series of abstract work explores multiple themes related to the connections between psychology and art. The landscapes, for instance, are a journey of story telling and memoir inspired by the emotional impact of her travels. They pay homage to special places she visited, orchestrating an archeology of colors and texture heavily influenced by her studies about the psychology of perception.

Her wearable art is primarily focused on the importance of bees to our culture. Silvana attach, fuse and embed fragments of her large sculptural encaustics to media such as resin, leather, and metals to create contemporary jewelry that highlights beeswax as a precious material.