Dendrophile Renata Lucia grew up amid forests and woodlands of the Columbia Bottomlands along the Texas Gulf Coast, which provide the roots of her ecological artworks. Being enclosed by trees and surrounded by books were two safe spaces from her youth, while string instruments provided a soothing soundtrack.

She worked as a classically-trained, professional violist in the 1980’s and ‘90s, followed by a career in technical writing. After a chondrosarcoma diagnosis in 2000, she took her first art class when she joined the Glassell School of Art, MFAH. She became the first trained artist in her family of outsider artists when she graduated from there with a Painting specialization.

During the covid-19 pandemic, Renata Lucia became a naturalist, joining the local chapters of the Texas Master Naturalists and the Native Plant Society of Texas, and obtaining employment in the state office of the later. She later joined a plein air painting group exploring her childhood ecoregion. This reconnection with nature and local ecological processes as well as the dread of on-going climate change are reflected in evocative landscape paintings, tree drawings, prints, and explorations of alternative materials.

Her work has been featured twice in the periodical New American Paintings and in Manifest Gallery’s International Painting Annual 9 Exhibition-in-Print. She has been a resident artist at Houston’s Project Row Houses and Burleson’s Russell Farm Art Center, and an award winner at both the Lawndale Big Show and an Assistance League of Houston Celebrates Texas Art exhibition.

She lives in Houston, TX and works out of her home studio in the Sharpstown area.