Edda Renouf

Edda Renouf once stated, “Essential to my paintings and drawings is the revealing of an abstract structure and energy inherent to my materials, the linen canvas and cotton paper.” Incising lines with an etching point to remove particles of paper, Renouf mediates the surface of her works, highlighting her interests in the natural world.

“There is a life hidden in the weave of the canvas, and also in the structure and fiber of the paper, the paint or oil pastel, and in the creative process itself,” artist Edna Renouf writes. To reveal the inner essences of her materials, she begins each work by carefully altering its ground in minute ways, perhaps by removing a thread from a canvas, or, in this case, delicately scratching very fine vertical marks with an engraver’s tool. These almost imperceptible incisions further accentuate the rough surface of the paper, ultimately serving as a template for an array of black lines against a hazy field of powdery blue pastels. Through pattern and repetition, such simple marks form a comfortable, natural rhythm within a universe whose primal elements-even air-are made visible and palpable.