“…important and recurrent themes in my art are those of time and music or sound. My art works are a record of the days, weeks, months and seasons when they were created, and thus act as a journal of my working process; and the theme of sound, points to the idea of a hidden presence of wave structures in our universe.”
Edda Renouf, Artist Statement in exhibition catalogue “Edda Renouf”, Annely Juda Fine Art, London, April 4 - May 3, 2013
Annely Juda Fine Art is delighted to announce an exhibition of recent work by Edda Renouf. Working since the 1970’s, Renouf has developed a unique method of revealing certain qualities of the linen canvas by removing specific threads according to the existing movement of the weave. She brushes on thin glazes and then sands the surface, making visible the life within the linen.
Works in this exhibition mark a new direction for the artist in unusually long and narrow vertical paintings made of several panels: a quadriptych, two triptychs and a diptych. Renouf found that the vertical paintings could be related to through one’s body. When standing before the artwork “my eyes were then led to read up and down the painting giving me a sense of movement.” Since Renouf identifies sounds with movement, titles of the paintings combine sounds with the natural elements.
Notable, too, in this exhibition is the reapplication of removed threads in almost all of the paintings. Renouf points out that a removed thread is naturally curved. By reapplying these threads, the canvas is given a freer, more organic character in contrast to the straight grid of the canvas. It also creates a delicate bas-relief which increases the painting’s affinity to sculpture.
The show also features a number of paintings and works on paper in the traditional square format. One of these is the 2014 painting, 'Threshold - December Sounds', which presented itself to Renouf as a completed work at an unusually early stage in its making, after the dark blue ground colour had been applied and sanded. Renouf cites the “unique perfection” of this painting as ironically an inspiration to look beyond the square format, leading her to the creation of the multi-panelled works made up of the long vertical canvases.
