- Museum number
- 1998,1107.3
- Description
-
Hidden Energy 3 (Third Poem to Mars). November 1997
Oil pastel with incised and scraped lines on Arches paper
- Production date
- 1997
- Dimensions
-
Height: 565 millimetres
-
Width: 560 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
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- Curator's comments
- Edda Renouf provided an artist's statement, dated 2003, which explains her drawing technique:
"Statement Regarding my Unique Process in Painting
Working with the linen, I discovered a unique process of revealing various qualities inherent to the weave by removing threads and then sanding the primed and painted woven structure.
In June 1971, upon graduating with an MFA from Columbia University School of
the Arts, I received a fellowship from Columbia to continue painting in Paris. It was in the autumn of the same year, that I came upon the raw linen canvas, which has since then continued throughout the years to be my preferred material. Working with the linen, I discovered a unique process of revealing various qualities inherent to the weave by removing threads and then sanding and glazing the primed and painted woven structure. I was looking for a new and personal approach to painting. Seeing that there was an indirect rapport in this technique to weaving, in the unraveling of the linen canvas, I then realized that it would be in sizing and priming and painting the changed structure with acrylic paint, that the hidden life of the linen would be most vividly revealed, that the linen's structure would become most visible. Also of interest to me, was the fact that the linen, which comes from the flax plant and is therefore of organic origin, is one of the earliest materials used in painting; is the oldest woven material, and was not only sacred, but considered a symbol of purity in the ancient Middle East. Whereas, on the other hand, the fast drying acrylic paint, which is a very contemporary material, also has an organic origin. Using these two materials together, I saw a synthesis of ancient tradition and contemporary innovation.
To understand more fully the interest I have for the linen canvas, there are several experiences from my early childhood and adolescence which are important. As a young girl, I was already fascinated by the woven structure of a large curtain, which every evening, I drew horizontally across a large skylight using a rope and pulley system. In the early morning, I would contemplate the weave, as the light shone through it. And later in the day, I would sit on the floor under the sky light to paint watercolors of landscapes, where I gave much attention to finely structured areas covered with blades of grass. Many years later, this memory came to me, as I held canvases, newly stretched with raw linen up to the window. I was observing the life and movement of the threads in the weave, which would then, so to speak, direct me as to which threads I should remove. I often feel that this is a meditative moment of visual listening.
Another memory is of my learning about Brownian movement when I was an adolescent. I became aware of the fact that everything I was seeing was just an illusion, and that all material existence was actually the constant movement of particles colliding with molecules. Then much later, through my readings in contemporary art, I came upon the idea: 'to make the invisible visible'. This lead me to the thought that the deeper and more essential meaning of any work of art was inherent to the material and to the way the artist would reveal its potential energy; I thus in 1971 had the desire to uncover the life and meaning hidden in the woven structure of the linen. Consequently, the structuralist idea that the subject matter or content lies within the material or form itself and is at one with it, became a primary factor in my painting and drawing.
In my drawing I was inspired by this newly discovered approach in working with the canvas, and also began to remove the paper using various incising and scraping tools to create lively furrowed lines. These I then made visible by applying pastel chalk or oil pastel, which I carefully rubbed into the Arches rag paper.
Another significant factor in my painting process relates to the fact that the weave of the linen canvas is a grid. In the mid-sixties, I learned of the importance of the grid as a basis for painting (especially since the Renaissance) and then soon became aware of the term Grid Painting. Later, when in Paris in 1971, I realized that the grid was already essentially inherent to the structure of the linen; so again, I was taken by the idea of making the grid in the weave visible, working in a, so to speak, sculptural way, by removing threads from the weave rather than painting a grid on top of the linen canvas."
January 2003,Washington, CT
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1998
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1998,1107.3