Renée Zangara was born at the Alameda Naval Base, in Oakland California. She moved to and made Portland, Oregon home in 1992. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Marylhurst University in 1996.

Renée lives and works in a unique area of St Johns in Portland, Oregon, at a confluence of river industry, woodlands, and an established working-class neighborhood. It’s here, on the edge of town, where her studio work and garden responsibilities are part of a daily routine, and the river landscape a part of her everyday existence. This landscape and the details within it have favorably merged with her art practice, and her reverence for Mother Nature is evident in her recording of it.

She is an active participant in the Portland art community and member of Nine Gallery. Renée’s work has been exhibited nationally and is in private and public collections, including: the Portland Art Museum, the Regional Arts & Culture Council’s (RACC) Visual Chronicle, the Hatfield Research Center and the Phil Knight Cancer Research Center at Oregon Health and Sciences University (OHSU), Oregon State University’s College of Agricultural Sciences, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and the Swedish Medical Center Foundation in Seattle, Washington.