Adele Renault (1988) is a painter, who does realistic portraits of overlooked subject matter, working in scale from intimate canvasses to wall-sized murals.
Renault grew up on a musical family on a farm in the Belgian Ardennes. At age 14 she traveled abroad alone; lived in Venezuela on an exchange, then two years in Brighton, England. She studied and practiced visual arts, from classical oil painting to modern-day spray can graffiti. In 2010 she graduated from the Academie Royale des Beaux Arts in Brussels with a degree in Graphic Design.
In 2009 Renault initiated her collaboration with artist Niels Shoe Meulman. They now travel the world together, creating large scale murals, where she adds a host of site-specific birds and animals to his iconic word-images. Together the duo also run Unruly Gallery in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, where they are based.
Renault is fascinated by the inconspicuous beauty of every day objects and subjects. She observes closely those and that not considered worthy of a second look. She paints portraits of faces, the elderly, the homeless and pigeons in a realistic style. Her subjects are pictured as photographed, yet are then isolated from their context, enlarged and flooded in sunlight. She captures moments and expressions full of stories and meaning. Suddenly a scruffy pigeon and a woman in the last days of her life emanate a quiet grace and irresistible force of life.
Ever since she left her nest in the Ardennes, painter Adele Renault has been flying around the planet. She spent her adolescent years in Venezuela and the United Kingdom before settling in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Spreading her wings, she has visited cities like New York, Berlin, San Francisco, Moscow, Singapore, Paris, Helsinki and Melbourne.
Adele Renault looks when most people tend to ignore. Like an urban ornithologist she scans the streets of the world. And what she brings back are portraits of pigeons. The scruffy birds that no one pays attention to. Adele captures them. Not in cages but in paintings. These portraits are both detailed like a Charles Darwin illustration and expressive like a Marlene Dumas painting.
For Partisan Creative Corner she presents a huge series of oil paintings in various sizes. Most of them will be on display for the first time. And by the way, pigeon voyageur is a French term for someone who travels a lot. Enjoy a different type of street art!
Her website is: http://www.adelerenault.com/