Inside NY Creatives – Vaea Dang

Inside NY Creatives #3 — Elizabeth Dama, serial painter of everyday life

When I arrived at Elizabeth’s studio, I realized I had brought with me a very specific image of what an artist’s workspace should look like: large windows, perfect light, the romantic idea of a studio.

Instead, Elizabeth welcomed me into her turquoise studio, converted from her daughters’ bedroom.

It wasn’t what I had imagined — and that made the conversation even more interesting.

Thank you, Elizabeth, for having me today. I’m trying to understand how artists reconnect with their creativity when they feel stuck. What do you do? How do you approach it?

I can answer that right away. I’m hardly ever stuck. I find stimulation in everything. For example, I was walking today when I passed a thin white line spray-painted on the road by a construction worker. That line was a language meant for someone other than myself. It made me question language, forms of communication, and sparked creative thoughts.

How can I ever be stuck when everything stimulates my creativity?

If I find myself unable to put brush to canvas, that doesn’t mean I’m stuck. I am continually searching, exploring, and living in my art. I am never stuck in my art because I am not stuck in my life. There is no separation.

I’m very impressed by your productivity. You’re extremely productive.

I am multifaceted. I am a creative explorer. I use many materials. I write, teach, and am involved in several projects. I am awake around 5 a.m. and get a lot accomplished.

I am organized. It helps me tremendously. Having structure balances my time, ideas, and processes, and enables me to feel better when I am working in my studio. I live better when I feel balanced.

You also teach students here?

I’ve been a teacher for a long time — not necessarily in the traditional sense, but by sharing my enthusiasm and my personal fulfillment as an artist.

I teach privately here in my studio a few days each week. When I studied at the School of Visual Arts, in between my own classes, I taught drawing to kids in my apartment. I was always interested in sharing what I learned.

I was also a waitress in Greenwich Village for ten years. That’s how I paid for my bachelor’s and master’s degrees — no student loans. I had my own apartment, I traveled through Europe, I met many celebrities. I didn’t save a dime either! All my money went to rent and education, but I lived an incredible life as an artist!

Living in the East Village, going to clubs for free, gallery hopping in vintage dresses, riding my bike up and down the avenues, and eating in tiny downtown spots — all of these experiences show up in my work and what I teach.

**_{Elizabeth, sketching while waiting for the bus}**

Many artists feel they need a dedicated studio to create. What advice would you give someone who is just starting and trying to find a space for their practice?

A studio is a workshop, but a space to practice can be anywhere. I consider my entire environment my studio. I observe my surroundings because I paint from life.

Yes, I return to a room to record my experiences on paper, but this connects back to your question about being “stuck.” Four walls can’t define my working space.

That said, having a place where I am set up with materials and don’t have to start over every day is vital. Establishing your own area and being able to visually “record” is the purpose of a studio.

But making work isn’t always indoors. I am observing all the time — landscapes, people, museums, construction sites, farms. I can pick up energy anywhere. The studio helps me transform that energy into form.

I notice that many of your paintings include nature and animals. Do you think the Hudson Valley has shaped your work?

That’s a good question. I am a Regionalist by nature.

When I lived in Manhattan, my work felt urban. I made abstract, textural pieces that resembled facades, bridges, and cityscapes. I collected paper, stone, and metal from the streets and incorporated them into my work to connect with my environment.

Here in the Hudson Valley, I have a different environment to draw from, but I am still pursuing the “feeling” in my work.

A teacher of mine, Jackie Windsor, used to ask whether our work was felt in the gut or in the head. I want my work to be felt in the gut. I am not interested in over-intellectualizing. I want my work to be intimate, grounded in real life, and accessible.

I have a mystery box with questions from different people. Questions they have always wanted to ask an artist. Can you pick one?

What is the last thing you quietly whispered to your work?

I am intimate with all my work. I can’t say I whisper — people from the Bronx don’t whisper!

There is a painting of my sister’s dog, Dixie. My brother-in-law passed away, and their longtime dog died shortly after. There was great loss in my sister’s home. Dixie came into her life during that time — and in a way, they rescued each other.

As I painted Dixie, I thought about how her role became greater than that of a pet. She carried emotional weight, protection, and purpose. That is what I was “whispering” as I painted.

It’s your turn to add a question to the mystery box. What question would you like to ask another artist?

What feeling do you want your work to express? Something felt in the gut, or something understood in the head?

Elizabeth Dama is a prolific acrylic painter whose work moves between landscape, portraiture, and scenes from everyday life. Her paintings begin from personal photographs, which she describes as “ordinary people living ordinary lives.” She transforms these captured moments into suspended fragments of time.

She lived and worked in Manhattan before moving to the Hudson Valley in 1989, where she has continued her practice ever since.

Follow Elizabeth’s work :

Instagram : poveromodama

https://tivoliartistsgallery.com/artists/elizabeth-m-dama

Inside NY Creatives #2_Janene Gentile, painting out loud

in Inside NY Creatives

Inside NY Creatives is a portrait series where I visit artists across the Hudson Valley to explore their spaces, their rhythms, and the stories behind their work. Each conversation is a door into their creative world.

Most of the time, I reach out to artists I know or want to know better, and we schedule a visit in advance…

Janene Gentile, a Bronx bold abstract painter didn’t give me time to plan. One day, out of the blue, she invited me into her garage studio, which she shares with her husband Bill, a photographer, and her daughter Andrea, who keeps her ceramic kiln there. Canvases were everywhere, colors splashing around like in the Froth on the Daydream, by Boris Vian.

She is a burst of energy — impulsive and bold, yet warm and inviting, always ready to leap. Every time she tells me a story, I find myself listening with full attention, caught by her freedom and her spark.

When I asked the first question, Janene closed her eyes and embraced the exercise so deeply, I dove into this interview with delight.

If you had to describe your art to someone who cannot see, or who cannot perceive color, what would you say?

I’d say my art is full of light, of energy, of enthusiasm and rhythm — and sometimes a little discord. Much like music… maybe jazz. If you were blind and sitting with me, and I had to describe a piece, I’d tell you it has a lot of energy and light, a lot of movement… and it’s musical.

That leads us to the next question. The way you talk — the way you use sound and gesture as much as words, sometimes even more than words — I love it. And I think it feels really close to how you paint.
If you had to explain the techniques and mediums you use in words — and then add all the sounds and gestures you naturally use when you talk, how would you describe it ?

I am very expressive in my language, in my hand gestures and body language. I see or feel the pieces begin as a dance. They’re not planned — they’re automatic, almost like entering a trance. In that trance, there’s movement, and I go back and forth with my medium: acrylic paint, spray paint, sometimes collage, different materials combined together. But as you can see around the space, it’s mostly color. I feel constantly pushed and pulled to find what is beautiful together, because I see the world — even its pain — as something beautiful, as something to embrace.

When people see my work, they often tell me it feels happy. I’m glad the audience feels that way, but it doesn’t necessarily reflect the gestures I’m making when I paint. There’s always music on — older music from the 60s, meditative music, hip-hop, dance — so there’s always a dance happening in the material. And I’ll use anything: painter’s backdrops, burlap, even linen sheets like the one right there. It’s all feeling, a constant feeling, and that’s what gets translated.

Do you remember the moment you started calling yourself an artist?

The creative process started very early in my life. In early adolescence, I knew there was a sense of feeling different. I don’t know if I ever actually said “I’m an artist,” but I knew there was something in me that needed to come out. In the early 60s, as a young adolescent, I would paint the windows in my room with different themes — sunlight, rainbows — to my mother’s surprise. I painted on any material I had: drop cloths, sheets, anything I could pin up on the walls.

At the same time, I was learning instruments — piano, violin, guitar, bass. Everything felt like it had to come out. I knew there needed to be a place for that, and art became that place.

We are in your garage, surrounded by your work. You said it’s a shared space with your husband and your daughter. You also have a basement — is the basement YOUR space?

Pretty much, yes — though it’s shared with the laundry room and the records (hahaha). But mostly, it’s mine.

What relationship do you have with your studio? Is it like a lover, a close friend, a confidant, maybe a therapist? Or something else?

I would say a lover. It’s very sensual. It’s funny you ask, because about a week ago I had that reflection. I hadn’t been painting large for a while. Since my accident (Janene badly broke her leg last year NDRL), I’d been making smaller pieces, and they were satisfying in their way. But one day recently, I went downstairs (in the basement NDRL) , and I opened up a piece — maybe it was the blue that drew me — and I started reworking an old canvas, more than 30 years old. It felt sensual, more than sexual. The act of moving that blue, of being part of that blue, was exciting again. I had no hesitation changing it, moving it, reworking it. I thought: why am I not doing this more often? It felt so good.

If your studio could speak back to you, what do you think it would say?

“Turn the music louder. Maybe organize me a little. Come down here more. Why aren’t you here more often?”

I have a mystery box with questions from different people. Questions they have always wanted to ask an artist. Can you pick one?

What question about your art do you wish you could answer again?

I think that my answers have always been very authentic, so I don’t feel like I wish I could answer any differently.

When Janene picked this question, I felt it wasn’t the most fitting for her — I can’t imagine her ever holding anything back. Her answers are always raw, spontaneous, and straight to the point. And as our conversation wound down, that same openness was still there…

At the end of our interview, I found myself with new art supplies under my arm and new mediums I was eager to explore. Janene’s generosity is contagious — she sends you back into the world with fresh tools in your hands and sparks in your mind.

Follow Janene’s work :

Instagram : gentilesquarespace

https://gentilepainter.squarespace.com/

Inside NY Creatives #1_Val Shaff, from darkroom to light.

in Inside NY Creatives

Val Shaff is a photographer who worked for years in New York. We already knew each other in our private lives, and had shared long conversations about the creative process — how projects begin, the questions that lead them forward, the idea of finding our voice, building a body of work, the doubts… When I imagined this series, I knew right away I wanted to sit down with her.

When I sent my first round of invitations to artists, Val booked the very first slot. That’s exactly who she is: efficient, spontaneous, always ready to dive in — generous, forgiving. Beginning with her felt like a relief.

The first time I visited her studio, I was struck by the light in the space, and by how everything seemed set with intention — archive files, a big island table in the middle so she could flow around and spread the work, a dedicated area for her computer and professional scanner. I remember thinking: If I were a photographer, this is exactly the kind of space I would dream of.

Val’s work with celebrities and their animals has been featured on the covers and in the pages of too many magazines to be listed. She’s photographed musicians, writers, actors, dancers, children, and yes, animals — though it would be unfair to pin her to just one subject. Her images are less about the category and more about a search for presence: a way of capturing the spirit of beings in motion, in relation, alive in front of her lens.

She welcomed me one gloomy morning in her studio, and that’s where our conversation began — sketching together the first lines of the NY Creatives map.

Hello Val, thank you for having me in this beautiful space. Can you tell me what first brought you to photography?

I grew up in a family where photography was part of our good times—not by making group pictures, but because the highlight of our family life was traveling. It was very important to my father that we see the world. He made home movies that were quite elaborate, with soundtracks and music, carefully edited by hand. My mother, though she didn’t consider herself an artist, made still photographs out of her own interest in family and place. So that was natural to me.

I thought I’d be an illustrator or a painter.

In high school, I learned to process my own film, reactivated an abandoned darkroom, and spent every spare minute there. At Bard, I started out as a painting major, but I never felt in sync with the department’s values — they frowned on my interest in representational work. Meanwhile, I was always in the darkroom. When Bard created a photography department, I became its first photo major. That gave me a real way to build a body of work. What drew me most to photography was the chance to document my own life, and that passion has stayed with me.

We’re in your studio now. It’s filled with light. What do you feel when you walk into this space?

It varies. Sometimes I see all the archives I’ve produced but haven’t fully explored, and it’s overwhelming. Other times it’s just an office. The best times are when I’m actively working on a body of work—I can’t wait to get back to it. I also sometimes feel guilty having such a great studio, when in the past I made do with so little. Paradoxically, it can feel harder now to access creativity.

What inspires me most here is what I see outside the windows. I’ve always looked outward for inspiration; what’s inside is my emotional response. I’m not a conceptualist interested only in my own thought process.

Some people say they need a space before they can create. You seem to suggest the opposite.

I do appreciate the studio, but I believe necessity is the mother of invention. A friend once said her creative practice is all about restraint—that resonated with me. Often, limitations or constraints bring the most energy. Now I’m trying to embrace other kinds of containers—community and regular practice. That’s why I’m excited to be involved with CPW and the class I’ll be working with this fall. (Photobook I: Making a Book Dummy by Adrianna Ault at CPW NDRL)

Do you have a specific memory of who or what shaped you most as an artist?

Not really. I’ve mostly followed my own heart. My influences come more from the history of painting than photography. I have a romantic view of life and prioritize feelings over intellect.

I know that you’ve been working on your archive. What happens when you revisit your work?

It’s both revisiting memories and discovering them anew. Scanning negatives feels mechanical, but surprises appear. I might recall when something happened, but as I refine the images—crop, adjust exposure—connections emerge across years. That helps me clarify my life’s work and see more coherently.

Do you recognize yourself as the same photographer today as in your early portraits?

Yes. My vision is pretty singular and consistent. My images are clean, direct, very much about the subject. That’s how I am too.

Do you feel your creative process helps you understand yourself?

Yes. I’m very intuitive when making photographs. I don’t over-conceptualize. I may get excited about a person or place, but once I start it’s instinctive. Editing is when I become more discerning. Looking back at old images now gives me a bird’s-eye view. It helps me see continuity in my vision.

Talking about intuition, do you sometimes have the immediate sensation, in the very moment of clicking, that an image is special?

Definitely. I rarely alter my photographs. They’re classical—usually full-frame. I often know when I’ve made a strong image, though it can happen at the start or only after going deeper into a shoot. Sometimes it’s about reframing until the essence emerges. For example, at a rodeo I photographed young men about to risk their lives bull riding—their authenticity was striking. Going back to those images years later, I rediscovered their intensity. There’s a continuity in my vision, even as subjects change.

I have a mystery box with questions from different people. Questions they have always wanted to ask an artist. Can you pick one?

“When does inspiration visit you, and how do you invite it in?”

Travel has always motivated me, but I also love the familiar. I like moody light, not bright sunny days. Different things inspire me—sometimes strangers, sometimes places I know well. Often it’s about deliberately putting myself in circumstances that will inspire me. Many of my images are solitary landscapes. Others are about relationships. Both inspire me in different ways.

I want to draw a map of NY creative souls. I believe in webs and connections. Who should I interview next?

My good friend Lisa Durfee. She’s one of the most creative people I’ve known. She wouldn’t call herself an artist first, but her life and her creative output are deeply consistent. She runs a vintage clothing store in Hudson called Five and Diamond. Everything she does involves recycling her environment—clothes, old wallpaper, collages. Even dryer lint from her vintage clothes became an art piece. She goes mudlarking and collects artifacts. Her life is an ongoing creative practice. I so admire that.

Our interview ended by opening a new door—onto creativity, onto ways of interpreting the world. I left grateful for that hour, surrounded by images and stories that will stay with me.

Follow Val’s work :

Instagram : valshaff

https://valshafflivingwithanimals.com/