Joseph Renda Jr. juxtaposes painstakingly realistic images against audacious surrealistic flourishes to illuminate the interconnectedness of all living things.
The Chicago-born painter and muralist — one of 13 artists exhibiting with Vertical Gallery at Aqua Art Miami 2025 — has been a mainstay of our programming for close to a decade, appearing in a series of group shows before making his solo debut with 2020’s ‘Biophilia.’ ‘Larger Than Life,’ which explored humankind’s outsized impact on nature, followed two years later, and this past September, Joe co-headlined ‘The Scenic Route’ opposite Laura Catherwood and Jerome Tiunayan. Discover what’s next in the latest installment of our web-exclusive Artist Spotlight series.
Vertical Gallery: What do you have in store for Aqua Art Miami?
Joseph Renda Jr.: The work I’m exhibiting is about escapism, to an extent. I’ve done work in the past where I've [depicted] little people painting a cloud or some aspect of the landscape, but this new series is about creating your own perfect world when the real world is not so great. That's what I feel we do as artists: we try to create perfection, even though we're never going to achieve it.
The work that I create is always going to have some type of serious undertone, but there's so much going on in our world that I wanted to create something a little bit brighter and more colorful. I’m doing a lot with crayon texture, which ties into childhood and how children think. They’re very optimistic — they don't really see the bad things, and when they draw, it's to create something happy, or something that makes them happy. Whereas adults draw to express something that doesn't make us happy or that we don't understand, or to learn about something. I’m trying to combine those two perspectives.
The crayon textures bring to mind “Through Innocent Eyes” [from 2022’s ‘Larger Than Life’]. That was a collaboration with your younger brother, correct?
He never drew on the actual painting. He did the drawing of the house that I painted. But yes, that piece was also about escaping into how a kid draws, and how they create versus how we create.
The funny part is that I'm painting how a child draws, which is how an adult would do it. I should just use crayon and be done with it, but no — I'm spending hours painting how a kid draws.
It’s also funny because I never drew as a kid, or went through the process of being creative, which is why no one ever thought that I would become an artist. My mom said I drew for a couple months, and then my dog ate my sketchbook, and I never drew again.
“My dog ate my sketchbook” is comedic perfection. Before we move on, let’s go further into the crayon textures. This kind of painstaking attention to tactile detail recurs throughout your work. Why is that so important to you? Why do you always refuse to take the easy route in favor of doing the thing that is so arduous? What is the fulfillment that you get from that?
There are two sides to it. The fulfillment I get is that I love technique. I love mimicking texture. If I didn't have to worry about money or worry about selling things, I would create still lifes, because I love figuring out metallics and dirt and all of these things. It's a puzzle for me, and solving it brings me fulfillment.
On the opposite end, it gives value to the work when the viewer knows it's not just a crayon. It’s the whole trompe-l'œil, “tricking the mind” type of thing — spending hours making this thing look like it took a second.
What kind of trial-and-error process goes into perfectly capturing the textures you’re emulating?
It depends on the texture. Because I've painted crayon before, I've already figured out that process. I also know that certain colors don't show up as crayon as much as other colors. Yellow really looks like crayon, and green looks like crayon, too, but not as much as yellow. It's just a matter of how much pigment's in it, if it's more transparent, if it's more opaque… things like that.
With new textures, I used to do studies. I'd have a sketchbook where I would gesso the pages and just try to figure it out. But now, I don't really have time for that, so I'm just going for it. I've been doing it long enough that I can stare at something and figure it out. You're basically deconstructing how things are made, and determining what layering process you need to do to get it to look like that.
Do you take notes, or maintain any kind of resource you can refer back to?
I should take notes. There are things that I've painted, like bronze, where I always forget what colors I used before and what process I used. That's why I liked using sketchbooks, because I would take notes in the sketchbook. I'd love to get back to doing that at some point. We'll see.
What response are you hoping to get from the Aqua Art Miami audience?
I definitely want people to appreciate the technical aspects, like realizing that the crayon is painted and things like that. But I hope they look deeper, too. When I showed in Brussels earlier this year, people were telling me stories about my paintings that were philosophical, sociological, psychological — just deep. It wasn't just one or two people, either. Every single person looking at my paintings was pulling out something that I intended, and then expanding upon it. I've never experienced something like that at any other show I've been in, so for Miami, I tried to create work that was more visually appealing as kind of an experiment to see how the audience responds.
I’ve been to [Miami Art Week] five or six times, and the best thing about working and showing there is watching people interact with the work. When you see all the people just walking by your paintings, it almost hurts. You’re like “Why is no one coming and looking at my paintings? I suck.” And then you get the random people that walk down the aisle, turn their heads and do double takes, then come in to experience the work. That's who you're making it for.
Vertical Gallery will feature six new paintings from Joseph Renda Jr. (@j.renda_artist) at Aqua Art Miami, running December 3-7. Email sales@verticalgallery.com for the collector preview.
“The paper being on the surface blocks the landscape behind it. You don't know what that half of the landscape looks like, because there is a piece of paper blocking your view, and the person drawing the landscape is just kind of guessing what's behind the paper,” Joe explains. “It’s a staple surrealist technique: Masking the front so the viewer has to guess what they’re missing.” 
