About

                          SPF15

SPF or Sun Protection Factor refers to the theoretical amount of time you can stay in the sun without getting sunburned. For example, an SPF of 15 would allow you to stay in the sun 15 times longer than you could without protection. But in reality, it’s not quite so straightforward. A multitude of factors affect how well you are protected from the sun.

 

“I used to stare 15 times longer than usual to those subjects I wanted to paint, considering them seriously as to wanting to protect them and keep them safe on a canvas for a lifetime, and I want every spectator to feel that same protection factor”.

 

Walking the streets and beaches as a constant observer, Vega captures fleeting impressions of the less spectacular occurrences of everyday life. In a society fascinated by and suspicious of the concept of “truthiness” — a visceral belief that something is true despite an absence of evidence — it is not surprising the veracity of her representations would be regularly undermined. Accentuating our unease, Vega manipulates her subjects in order to convey their own brands of bizarre reality. Subjects portrayed in: Summer Babe, King of the Beach, Sunkissed, Hot in Herre, Blister in the Sun, Trap Queen, Lucky 13 and Paradise II’s underwater abstraction are plucked from life. The departures Vega makes from perceived reality create a figure from the pictures she takes such as: revealing the perfection of a woman’s torso, suspending a strand of hair in motionless precision, capturing otherwise innocuous subjects and laying bare their undertones.
 

SPF15 heightens women’s uneasiness by simultaneously seducing and tempting the viewer. Simple compositions, vivid colors, luscious surfaces along with subject matters that are curious, sexually charged, or simply beautiful draw viewers deep into her not so imaginary world.  

 

Her compositions might seem shallow but tenuous, as in Those Hazy Lazy Crazy Days of Summer’s distorted perspective. They do not recede deep into an illusionistic distance but stop short, like the scenic flats used to define space on theater and movie sets, conveying a sense of superficiality, or confusion. And, like tales performed on TV, the subtle narratives implied by the artist’s vivid scenarios are often allegorical in nature, a straightforward construction veiling a more complicated intent.

 

Most of Vega’s paintings come from either pictures she take herself or from social media. Aspirations for over-the-top lifestyles show no signs of abating and social media flaunts an endless parade of flawless self-presentation. The distance Vega creates between the real world and the altered truths leaves us uneasy. 

 

Vega’s process has always begun with academic painting techniques that have fallen mostly out of favor in recent decades. Alongside her bold use of these old-fashioned styles stands her interest in the painstaking skillful labor while approaching the meticulous rendering of hundreds of individual strokes. Her method challenges contemporary trends which are characterized by cool, conceptually grounded processes, casually haphazard abstraction, and expressionistic figuration.

 

Vega’s early figurative paintings are indebted to John Singer Sargent’s (b. 1856), who is considered the leading portrait painter of his generation for his recreations of Edwardian era luxury. In contrast, Vega’s fixation on beauty manifests not in such exaggerations but in her fastidious process, so intense it verges on embarrassment due to the time and labor spent, as well as her content. Her water abstractions, lazy subjects, perfectly sculpted bodies as well as women laying down, sun tanning or doing nothing are so simple that her intense focus on them can seem perplexing, but also dryly and darkly humorous. This accentuates the peculiar nature of these otherwise quotidian subjects, each of one creates a perception of reality sitting firmly in the in-between space.

 

Vega wishes to remain a classical artist within the figurative tradition, exposing the modern aspects of her world.