Renée Caouette
Renée has lived between the United States and Paris, France studying fine art and art history. She graduated from the American University of Paris with a BA in Art History, and has her MFA from the Academy of Art in San Francisco. She now resides in southern California and teaches at Otis College of Art & Design.
Renée explores ubiquitous themes through the eyes of a millennial such as identity, feminism, death, equality and addiction, making her work not a quotidian narrative but rather a relevant and relatable story. As a visual communicator, Renée feels the need to express the global zeitgeist and expanding diaspora of the collective subconscious. Grounded in realism, her works are conceptual using symbolism and composition to illustrate her perspective. She is currently working on a new series of paintings inspired by dreams and thoughts on how we communicate with God. This series delves into the uncanny (referring to Sigmund Freud's respective essay) and pushes the boundaries of her representational comfort zone into a neo-surreal and abstract space. Renée has always been a vivid dreamer, finding it fascinating how they feel so real and detailed. Yet when reflecting, it is hard to pinpoint what those details truly are. In these paintings, the real becomes the unreal and the real again.
In June 2016 she was awarded a grant by The Ringholz Foundation and invited to the Bakehouse Art Complex Residency Program during Miami Art Basel. She was also a 2018 Stobart Foundation Grant recipient and 2020 Artist’s Fellowship Inc NYC Award winner. Her most recent project is a corporate installation of life-size murals for an international tech company. Renée has exhibited throughout the United States and Europe, including Paris, London, Switzerland, New York City, Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles, among others. She was invited to join the Copley Society of Boston and the Salmagundi Club of NYC. Renée regularly participates in charitable art auctions for women’s health and education, she believes the power of art can save the world.
Renée explores ubiquitous themes through the eyes of a millennial such as identity, feminism, death, equality and addiction, making her work not a quotidian narrative but rather a relevant and relatable story. As a visual communicator, Renée feels the need to express the global zeitgeist and expanding diaspora of the collective subconscious. Grounded in realism, her works are conceptual using symbolism and composition to illustrate her perspective. She is currently working on a new series of paintings inspired by dreams and thoughts on how we communicate with God. This series delves into the uncanny (referring to Sigmund Freud's respective essay) and pushes the boundaries of her representational comfort zone into a neo-surreal and abstract space. Renée has always been a vivid dreamer, finding it fascinating how they feel so real and detailed. Yet when reflecting, it is hard to pinpoint what those details truly are. In these paintings, the real becomes the unreal and the real again.
In June 2016 she was awarded a grant by The Ringholz Foundation and invited to the Bakehouse Art Complex Residency Program during Miami Art Basel. She was also a 2018 Stobart Foundation Grant recipient and 2020 Artist’s Fellowship Inc NYC Award winner. Her most recent project is a corporate installation of life-size murals for an international tech company. Renée has exhibited throughout the United States and Europe, including Paris, London, Switzerland, New York City, Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles, among others. She was invited to join the Copley Society of Boston and the Salmagundi Club of NYC. Renée regularly participates in charitable art auctions for women’s health and education, she believes the power of art can save the world.
