A talented painter of New England harbor scenes, Rena Small was born in central Massachusetts in 1902. She studied painting under regionalist Umberto Romano at the Worcester Art Museum school of art during the mid 1920s. She first visited the Gloucester, Massachusetts, art colony in 1928, and undertook study with Anthony Thieme, the colony's leading teacher at the time. In the ensuing years she returned to Gloucester each summer painting alongside Thieme, Emile Gruppe and Francis Mulhaupt, whom she knew and admired. She was a member of and exhibited with the Gloucester Society of Arts throughout the mid 1930s. She also exhibited with the Rockport Art Association. During the 1940s Small accepted a position with the Carlton Engraving Company in Worcester, Massachustts, and was one of the company's leading artist-designers.