Renée DeCarlo

Statement

Artist Statement

My work is what I consider to be a form of life drawing and begins in the recording of precise physical moments in time; the bumps in the road, the turbulence in the airplane, and the chaotic patterns that people move around me. I’m a map-maker; documentarian and translator of my own physical experience through time and space; documenting mundane and possibly repetitious moments that often go unrecognized or considered unimportant, and yet are part of collective experience.  

I’m constantly inspired by humanity and the vulnerabilities we each have and work through to manage our daily existence. I’ve currently been most affected by the ways in which we perceive our connections to others and the impacts we each have. During COVID, I had 2 traumatic experiences, both on my bike. One an assault by a stranger in a Mazerati SUV, throwing a bottle at my face, the 2nd when I collided with car behind a “slow street” sign. I slid directly into the vehicle’s wheelwell from the sand below the sign, and was launched over his car to the ground. In both instances, I suffered a head injury, and the latter snapped my tibia, my boot keeping my ankel and lower leg intact but resulting in a compound fracture and many months of rehabilitation before I could walk again and be self sufficient.

Running a business and art studio in this state, affected many things in my work. It deepened my connections with others as I needed my community, my support system to help me with almost everything and to keep me going forward and getting me where I needed to be. During these extraordinary past few years of time, it seems like crisis and danger threatens all of humanity in so many ways, either by virus, environmental disaster or the inhumanity of humanity.

Layers and material play an important role in my work and each of my series is typically relevant to specific period of time and a reaction to it as I process all that is happening to me and around me. Similar to building a house – one layer supports and possibly determines the next, and each time the outcome is different, yet reminiscent. The physical layers of my work are also odes to the natural side of the materials I choose to use, allowing me to create a boundless cycle of elements from things like wood, ink, thread and pigment. The experiments I create explore ideas of tradition and history, structure, surface and color, and the boundaries and relationships between.

In front of “a Path’s Journey” during my “In RETROSPECT at the Midway gallery. 2019