Cena Pohl Crane is an oil painter who relocated to Margaretville from Brooklyn in 2025. Locally she’s exhibited in group shows at the Roxbury Arts Group and Margaretville’s Longyear and Art Up! Galleries. Cena received her BFA in painting at Washington University in St. Louis, which included a semester studying art history and painting in Florence Italy, an experience that cemented her love of figurative art. Though her training was academic, her paintings utilize a deeply saturated color palette and energetic brushwork that prioritizes emotional resonance over representational likeness. Her process is one of discovery rather than documentation; working without preconception of what the painting will communicate, rarely referencing sketches or photography. She begins by making spontaneous marks on the canvas, leaning into the materiality of the oil medium, contrasting areas of opacity with thin, layered washes which allow the luminosity of the to canvas shine through. “I then interpret this chaos, pulling figures out or pushing landscapes back, responding to the feeling that the emerging shapes elicit.” The image discloses subconscious meaning through the act of creation, often revealing themes of melancholy, anxiety, or the uneasy comfort found between figures.