About Me
The Life, Work, designs and insight to the Abstract Art from the soul of Rina Rinella
Introduction
Two days before Christmas (over 60 years ago) in the sleepy town of Bulawayo Rina Rinella arrived in this world as an early present to her Italian born mother (from Alassio), and as this cute “tomboy” grew up, she was most happy fishing for Tiger fish and hunting along the mighty Zambezi River with her Dad.
At the early age of 16, she headed “Down South” only stopping once she reached the Indian Ocean, and has spent the rest of her adult life living in various places in South Africa.
From an early age, Rina Rinella has always had a passion for design and color. Rina has painted traditional art, like the little house below the mountain, seas, clouds, even wildlife with a leopard stretching out on a tree trunk after a kill, however her true passion has always been with painting abstract art and her keen sense of balancing designs with colors shines through in her unusual artwork. If you love abstract, you will absolutely love any work produced by Rina Rinella.
Today Rina is a homely person and an excellent cook (design with taste) is happily married to Norman and has two lovely grown up boys (Stephen & Jason) who until recently, both lived and worked in London. After five years abroad one of her boys has returned home and to say that Rina is ecstatic about the change of locations is an understatement. Her radiant smile says it all.
Rina has never been a “conventional” type person, she was the first to buy a Porsche in the family, which she later traded for a silver Chrysler PT Cruiser (more room for moving canvases.) and now owns a black Hummer, When Rina is not painting, she is in the garden followed faithfully by two sausage dogs and even the garden is filled with color and her “winter” garden probably has more colour and flowers in it than the average garden has in summer.
Rina has her own workshop and gallery at her home in Randburg (JHB - South Africa) where she can design and paint to her hearts content. This new-found freedom allows her to paint whenever the urge arises and to work freely without having to clean and tidy up the messy paint spots, clean brushes, etc, only a true artist can appreciate the treasure of having your own lockup-and-go workshop.
Rina thinks up her designs before hand and only then begins to apply her ideas to canvas. Rina also mixes her own unique colors in oils and on average it takes about a month to complete a painting to her satisfaction and, as any artist knows, oils takes many days before they dry. Once signed, no changes take place.
We trust that this short write-up gives you an insight as to who Rina Rinella is.