Renée Bouchard's lives and paints in North Bennington, VT. Over the past two years she has been working in Manhattan domestically and decoratively renovating an apartment on Fifth Avenue. In January 2019, she started her first semester as an MFA candidate at the Vermont College of Fine Art. She attended the Phoebe Flory Watercolor School and the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1995. Later in 1999 she graduated from the Maine College of Art in painting. In 2016, her exhibit Kaleidoscopic Pathos was held at the Vermont State House’s Governor Gallery. As an artist in residence in 2017, at Southern Vermont College she taught the course Art, Making and Meaning in which college students collaborated with preschool children on large canvases. She and her 3 year old son had a collaborative painting; The Fear of It; What Above Love at Andrew Edlin’s Gallery exhibition Et Tu, Arte Brute?

Her studio practice involves painting from observation and experience in the outdoors of New England often mixing ground pigments with oils using a glass palette. When working in the studio, Renée's paintings explore invented interior landscapes evocative of mysterious labyrinths or complex caves. Materials used for the works are often gifts, found, or sentimental. She believes it is an ethical responsibility to be resourceful with materials.

"I see Children's art as the earliest and most abstract search for language. As in Zen painting, one mark is capable of containing many aspects of human presence. Escaping the confines of one reality and entering a new reality is often where I find meaning within the complexity of the mind and the emotions it houses."

Her current research is on Composition in Art, Dystopian Beauty, Abstract Expressionism, and Impressionism. She is simultaneously and carefully considering mud and monsters. She is delighted to be working with Colin Hunt as VCFA's artist mentor for the next six months.

Renée Bouchard Artist Statement 2019

Renée Bouchard's recent paintings explore invented interior landscapes evocative of mysterious labyrinths or complex caves.

Materials used for the recent works are often gifts, found, or sentimental.

I believe it is my ethical responsibility to be resourceful with materials. I experiment with chance by way of collaboration with children, especially my 3-year old son, and by so doing I am able to widen my visual vocabulary while emphasizing the importance of early childhood education. I see children’s art as the earliest and most abstract search for language. As in Zen painting, one mark is capable of containing many aspects of human presence. Escaping the confines of one reality and entering a new reality is often where I find meaning within the complexity of the mind and the emotions it houses.

I use titles to constrain the viewer within the ambiguity of my paintings. Playing the role of the archetypical child, I begin by doodling. Color is the machine that organizes it. Ultimately, I strive to integrate my life and art making.

Renée Bouchard Artist Statement 2016

Kaleidoscopic Pathos:

is a confluence of paintings by Renée Bouchard that spans the past seven years. Her recent paintings explore invented interior landscapes evocative of mysterious labyrinths or complex caves.

Materials used for the recent works are often gifts, found, or sentimental.

I believe it is my ethical responsibility to be resourceful with materials. By making use of the perceived limitations of motherhood thru collaborative experimentation with children, especially my 3-year old son, I am able to widen my visual vocabulary. I see children’s art as the earliest and most abstract search for language. As in Zen painting, one mark is capable of containing many aspects of human presence. Escaping the confines of one reality and entering a new reality is often where I find meaning within the complexity of the mind and the emotions it houses.

Kaleidoscopic Pathos:

is a confluence of paintings by Renée Bouchard that spans the past seven years in which she works by combining views from the landscape (mostly of Vermont, Maine, Hawai’i and Washington) and the human experience by way of observation, memory and invention. The paintings are very much about the wonder of paint and mark making.

The paintings are very much about the wonder of materials and mark making. Materials used for the recent works are often gifts, found, or sentimental (including collaborating with children.)
I believe it is my ethical responsibility to be resourceful with materials. To me, studio detritus represents the duality of decay and creation. As in Zen painting, one mark is capable of containing many aspects of human presence. Escaping the confines of one reality and entering a new reality is often where I find meaning within the complexity of the mind and the emotions it houses.

I use titles to constrain the viewer within the ambiguity of my paintings. Playing the role of the (archetypical child, I begin by doodling. Color is the machine that organizes it. On purpose, I integrate my life and art making.

Renée Bouchard

June 2016

 

"The view of evolution as chronic bloody competition among individuals and species, a popular distortion of Darwin's notion of ‘survival of the fittest,' dissolves before a new view of continual cooperation, strong interaction, and mutual dependence among life forms." Milbrath's Envisioning a Sustainable Society.

 

"Forever – is composed of Nows –"
Emily Dickinson

My current studio practice is geared towards inclusivity. In my recent paintings my priorities are two‐fold. My goal in both of these pursuits is to seamlessly integrate my life and art making.

First, I have been preoccupied with the scribbling stage of children’s art, as my life involves being a stay‐at‐home mother. These recent paintings are female‐based invented interior landscapes/labyrinths/caves that deliberately intertwine marks made by children, especially my 3‐year‐old son, and myself. Drawing upon my experience as an elementary school art teacher, I see the scribbling stage as the earliest and most abstract search for language. Children to me are in the ideal state of mind to make art, examples of Freedom, Utopia, Nirvana, or, simply put, the spiritual state achieved when practicing non‐attachment. I look to children’s art for its irrational belief in magic and the possibility that perhaps we live in a culture where art actually functions in life and is part of a fundamental, unquestioned concept of what it means to be human.

In these collaborative works I play the role of the archetypical Conscious Creator, Mother Goddess, and simultaneously a child seeing the world with fresh eyes. I participate in this process as a democratic space maker that maintains the autonomy of the artist. I like the viewer not knowing who made this mark or that one. Escaping the confines of one reality and entering a new reality is often where I find meaning within the complexities of the mind and the emotions it houses. I am inviting empathetic response, and paying closer attention to moments in which we individually and collectively relate to each other. I believe that by so doing we are ultimately shaping the worlds we inhabit.

Second, I see it as my ethical responsibility not to negatively affect the planet and its inhabitants. This principle requires that I be completely resourceful in all aspects of my practice. Salvage, such as spent paint tubes, glass baby food jars used for mixing paint, wire cloths hangers, human hair, nails, thread, yarn, empty cans, their lids, metal spoons, plastic forks and flooring, as well as gifts, including imperfect canvases, panels of MDF, plywood, and old paint, provide for me ample opportunity to express my interest in the duality of decay and creation. Using said detritus I am able to express my experience of being present.

I am, amongst other things, inspired by images and objects created beyond the boundaries of the traditional "art world"-by individuals with mental illness, "outsider" art, folk art and other types of art that break the so-called "rules." In my recent series of paintings, I have been preoccupied with exploring the Scribbling Stage of children's art. These collaborative works are female-based invented interior landscapes/labyrinths/caves that deliberately intertwine marks made by children, especially my 2 year old son, and myself. I play with the children in a manner similar to how musicians "jam", creating democratic space that maintains the autonomy of the artist. I like the viewer not knowing who made this mark or that one. As with art found in caves 30,000 years ago, I am interested in humankind's primal urges to record and pass down memories visually. In these collaborative works, created with sometimes up to seven children, I facilitate the limitations, while playing the role of the archetypical Conscious Creator, Shaman or Mother Goddess.

Often finding myself in a creative spiral, seemingly unable to break my own rules, I seek collaboration with children as a way of widening my vocabulary. Drawing upon my experience as a pre-Kindergarten through 8th grade art teacher, watching children make art, I feel as though without effort they achieve the state of mind that I seek while painting. I see the Scribbling Stage as the earliest and most abstract search for language. I look to children's art for its irrational belief in magic and the possibility that perhaps we live in a culture where art actually functions in life and is part of a fundamental, unquestioned concept of what it means to be human. While questioning the competing values within the art world, I believe that children are in the ideal state of mind to make art. Children, from the time they are in the womb, are to me the essence of Freedom, Utopia, Nirvana, or, simply put, the spiritual state achieved when practicing non-attachment. I admire their work because it keeps me sincere while not knowing the answers.

Materials used to make these recent works are most often given to me or found, -including old paint, common MDF panels, imperfect canvases,; some are personal, like children's art supplier and hair. I choose to collage these materials-as a way to express what my priority as an artist is, which is to experience life (humanity) directly. Studio garbage, such as spent paint tubes and lids from plastic containers that were used for mixing paint, is collaged to some of their surfaces. The duality of decay and creation to me represents the unending passage of time between presence and absence. As in Zen painting, one mark is capable of containing many aspects of human presence. Escaping the confines of one reality and entering a new reality is often where I find meaning within the complexities of the mind and the emotions it houses.