Renée A. Fox

Newest paintings at the Sturt Haaga Gallery in Descanso Gardens:

Lakshmi, Hindu Goddess of Material Wealth, 2013, Oil on panel, 36 x 72 inches.

Durga, Hindu Goddess (Supreme Mother), 2013, Oil and colored pencil on panel, 36 x 72 inches.

Sturt Haaga Gallery at Descanso Gardens

“The WILD Flowers”
the earth laughs in flowers
--e.e. cummings

Although the southern California winters are mild, everyone still looks forward to the first signs of spring—the colorful blooms of cherries, crabapples, poppies and tulips. The flower is a powerful symbol of regeneration, fertility, birth, and the continuity of life, measured out in the chapters we call seasons. Besides, to eyes human, insect, bird, and bat alike, flowers are both beautiful and irresistible.

Next year’s spring bloom will come early to Descanso with a profuse and colorful exhibition in the Sturt Haaga Gallery of contemporary artists’ interpretations of flowers. Opening to the public on January 15, 2013, the group show of primarily southern California artists’ painting, installations, and sculpture will present a garden of delight for the eye, and a thought-provoking investigation of how and why we instantly recognize certain forms and colors as “flowers,” even though what we are seeing is totally imaginary. The show is entitled, “The WILD Flowers”—a play on words, since these flowers will be “wild” in the sense of fanciful and perhaps even a bit outrageous. The Descanso show has been timed to coincide with and complement an upcoming exhibition at The Huntington entitled, “When They Were Wild,” an examination of the artistic tradition of documenting and cataloguing botanic subjects through watercolor, drawing, and painting which opens March 9.

According to curatorial coordinator John David O’Brien, “The WILD Flowers” at Descanso Gardens will “... extrapolate the unique forms, complex shapes and fantastic colors of flowers and present a compelling, even radical, departure from representation, renovating the tradition of the still life, but bringing this time-honored compositional format into the vocabulary of contemporary art.” The exhibition will include work by: Lisa Adams, Maura Bendett, Holly Boruck, Gary Brewer, Charles Fine, Penelope Gottlieb, Kymber Holt, Erika Lizée, Renée A. Fox, James Griffith, Mara Lonner, John Millei, Nancy Monk, Roland Reiss, Raymond Saunders, Michael Todd, and Michiko Yao.

Of the many categories of the fantastical in nature, none is quite as diverse and as consistently astonishing as that of the flower. While we may admire the flower as a beautiful object, what we are really seeing is delightful evidence of possibly the most sophisticated and durable strategy for reproduction, speciation, and evolution our planet has yet offered.

“The WILD Flowers” opens to the public on Tuesday, January 15, at 10 a.m. The exhibit runs through March 31, 2013. The Sturt Haaga Gallery is located at Descanso Gardens, 1418 Descanso Drive, La Cañada Flintridge, 91011.

About Descanso Gardens:
Established as a public garden in 1953, Descanso Gardens is located at, near the interchange of the 2 and 210 freeways. The Gardens are open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, members welcome at 8 a.m. Closed Christmas Day. Admission is free for members and children 4 and younger. $8 for adults; $6 for seniors and students; $3 for children 5 to 12. Parking is free. Fees for classes and programs include Gardens admission. For information, call (818) 949-‐4200 or visit www.descansogardens.org. Descanso Gardens is accredited by the American Association of Museums.

Cartwheel Art covers "Quad Shot" with Karen Finley, Renée A Fox, Diane Gamboa and Gronk at Coagula Curatorial

My latest mural: Birthing Rite is now on view at Coagula Curatorial through February (click here for gallery website)

A few installation pics from opening night:
**mural has been re-installed to to be viewed from the exterior of the gallery through February**

Image: Walpa D' Mark

Image: Ginger Van Hook

1/6 scale Sketch for mural: Birthing Rite, 2012. Graphite on paper, 6 1/2 x 42 inches.

Artist statement:

Expressions of female sensuality, ideal beauty and the stereotypical feminine are common components of my work that speak to my own interpretations and reflections of what “feminine” and beauty mean to me and to popular culture. I’ve worked comfortably in those areas, managing to maintain a level of sugary sweetness playfully punctuated by “dirty parts”.

When Coagula Curatorial invited me to create a mural for the transom window at the gallery this fall I was excited for a continuation of the somewhat surreal hyper feminine, sexy yet ephemeral mural “A Decadent Work” at West LA College this past February. The timing for this next work was unexpectedly influential to my concept as it coincided with my frustration caused by the explicit disregard for women’s rights during this past general election where words were spoken that threatened to strip from women progress that has been made in regards to our equal treatment as US citizens in the past century.

The 5 part mural, Birthing Rite, envisions a large central orchid symbolizing the autonomous female, actively aborting a sac of premature snake eggs (referenced from an image of a pregnant eviscerated snake). Symbolism of the snake has historically been feminine.

For the patriarchy, snake has been associated with Eve, and both have been symbols of evil, the “Fall of Man” and fear of the unknown. Ancient maps often depicted great serpents at the outer edges of the seas, warning men not to dare sail their ships beyond the known to certain death. Ancient men used the symbol of the snake as the goddess, depicting death, the unknown, and the uncharted. Snake has also been the archetypal symbol of the Great Mother Goddess and a symbol of the Kundalini Shakti energy, the feminine energy that ignites and fuels our spiritual awakening process.

I believe that we are all privy to experiences that enlighten and make us wiser, where we embrace and learn from our fears, accepting the opposites inside and outside of us, and reconcile our own masculine and feminine. Even a little gratitude and appreciation for the Great Mother (creation itself) will help guide us all on our path toward autonomy, recognizing true beauty and joy, and ultimately unbiased respect for our fellow human.

"Best Art Curators in Los Angeles" 10/29/2012, CBS 2, Local News

Interview with Lisa C Soto for L.A. Centric Magazine
"Back and Forth with Renée A Fox, Renaissance Woman"
click above to read article

Monica Elayne of GYST blog talk radio interviews Renée Fox 6/4/2012

Click above to listen!

Critical Acclaim for "A Decadent Work": Huffington Post Haiku Review by Peter Frank

A Decadent Work: A Mural by Renée A. Fox

Opens March 29 6-9pm

West Los Angeles College

9000 Overland Avenue, Culver City, CA 90230

1/20 scale sketch for mural, Colored pencil on tracing paper.

The artist will paint one fifteen by sixty foot mural directly on a large curved wall in the gallery that will be completely painted over at the end of the six-week exhibition. A labor-intensive exercise, the mural has developed through multiple revisions in the past two months. Its final incarnation will take two full weeks to produce.

A Decadent Work runs from Monday, March 26 through Monday, May 7, 2012. The opening reception will be held on Thursday March 29, 6:00 – 9:00pm. The mural will be located in the gallery on the Fine Arts Campus at West Los Angeles College located at 9000 Overland Avenue in Culver City. Regular gallery hours are from 10:00am to 4:00pm Monday through Thursday. Admission is free and parking in the college lot is $2. For additional information about the College or location, please call 310 374 8085.

Artist’s Statement-

Art is arguably the ultimate decadence, materially, and in its creation, the output of decadent individuals. It is hard to miss the irony that we are living in the Great Recession and luxuries like art are more important than ever, as investments for the 1% or as luxury of expression at a time when the voice of the masses is kept as quiet as possible. The artist is implicated in the importance of the luxury object, in his/her act of its creation. Artists from the Decadent movement (late 19^th century) avoided living an everyday life to look for an escape into an idealized beauty that existed only in the imagination. Decadent artists and literary aesthetes such as Oscar Wilde, espoused that art should exist for its own sake, independent of moral and social concerns. Life should be lived similarly as art, allowing for explorations and indulgences such as drugs and alcohol, sexual deviance and beautiful objects such as the most monstrous of flowers, orchids.

A Decadent Work uses parts of different Orchids, the largest, most showy and diverse family of flowering plants on earth in deliberately excessive feminine displays of sexuality and beauty. The planned demise of the piece renders it a luxury or a “useless object” just as Wilde explains that while all art is quite useless, “the only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. (Wilde, Picture of Dorian Gray)

For more information, images, and interviews please contact Renée A. Fox @ reneeafox@sbcglobal.net or call 310 621 5416.