Artist Interview: Painter Renée Levin’s Unhurried Eye
What makes a flower petal, a pearl or a seashell special? On the canvases of Renée Levin, who paints their details writ large, the formation of these objects becomes a kind of miracle. Her go-to motif—extremely detailed objects set against plain backgrounds—is a way of exploring and sharing that miracle. As cliché as it might sound, Levin tells Observer, she has felt a profound connection to nature since childhood. “There are big narratives behind these natural objects that have long been overlooked. I want to celebrate them by putting them on a pedestal to show my audience all these little details that have incredible symmetries or patterns that Mother Nature created.”
Levin’s subjects, rendered in paint in two dimensions, have an almost tactile presence. To achieve that effect, Levin gravitates toward a palette with minimal colors to emphasize texture—creamy colors, heightened by strong lighting and bright glimmers on shiny surfaces, exaggerate the shadows. “I always say my paintings give the audience ‘the permission to feel’, and you could take it literally,” she explains, adding that she almost never paints her subjects in the settings where they’re typically found. Instead, she transports them via the canvas, which gives them another life. “In doing that, it creates a focus. If I paint a flower in the landscape of grasses, I don’t think people would pay so much attention and look at it so closely.” Sometimes she paints only a petal, not even the full flower, in its imperfect state, “so it enables—or forces—the viewers to really focus.”
Figuratively, that permission to feel is her way of restoring attention and slowness to our lives. “These days, our lives have become so fast that it has almost become robotic, especially with technology, which is a little scary,” Levin says. Painting enlarged objects is almost like a meditation for her—a way to realize how all-encompassing these small things in nature are and how many details go unnoticed when our attention is constrained by efficiency. Enlarging details lets her show her audience the beauty and nuance in objects they might otherwise overlook.
Often, Levin’s painting process starts with the simple act of collecting. She has jars of natural objects, which she photographs in a dark room where she can control the light source. “Photographing is actually a super time-consuming process,” she says. “I play with the composition, seeing where the light hits the object and creates the shadows. Through my camera, negative space and composition rework things into something I’m happy with.” When it is time to start painting, she usually sketches out the object, then paints from reference photographs while also looking at the object directly. Photography is especially important when she’s working with ephemeral objects like flower petals that will decay as she paints, though she says that painting is often the easiest part. “For me, it’s in weeks, but it really depends on the intricacy of the object, the composition, and the size.”
As much as she uses the camera, Levin has never considered photography one of her mediums. “When you’re a painter who paints realistically, you’re almost in constant competition with yourself,” she points out. “You’re constantly trying to get to that point of challenging how good you can really get at it. With a photograph, it’s almost too easy.” Levin is, notably, not a trained painter; she went to art school for design and worked as a designer for years before pivoting to painting professionally in 2019. Still, she “always had an itch to paint. I always needed to use my hands to release my creativity.” That background in design is apparent in her work. “The contrast, boldness and the dramatic side of my work stem from design. Learning to use negative space while designing helped me create compositions through my painting.”
Artists often have theories or narratives at the ready, but Levin resists that. Instead, her work asks for presence and slowness, and she wants viewers to develop their own ideas about the objects she paints: “In my new collection, these flowers almost become figurative: the curvatures of the stems almost insert you into these forms. I call them vessels of memory, as they’re almost like a reflection of the stages of my life, which I want others to see, too.” Levin believes there’s no way to look at these flowers without experiencing them as forms that generate feeling—they’re so full of emotion as objects and forms in themselves, while also embodying a minimalist sensibility. “The biggest misconception of my work is that I just paint pretty objects. It’s way more than that. Our realizing our relationship to nature and to objects around us itself is a philosophical journey.”
Levin’s work can be found in the hands of private collectors and in the halls of institutions. In June, six pieces featuring pearls and shells in monochromatic colors will be part of an exhibition at Hidell Brooks Gallery in Charlotte, North Carolina. She also takes on commissions, which require getting to know buyers and how the spaces where paintings will be displayed are used. “There are many intimate conversations because ultimately they’re going to be living with the art, so it has to feel right for them.” She recently completed a residency project at White Elephant Hotel, a family-owned hotel in Nantucket, Massachusetts, where she painted after encountering the owner’s wife’s collection of objects. She freely admits that finding homes for her paintings can be emotional. “I like the connection part of commissioned artworks because often you don’t even know where the art ends up, and it’s sad. It’s a piece of me. It’s like letting go of a child.”
She started Instagram just before COVID, when people began slowing down and seeking creativity as an outlet against uncertainty. “We’re in a goal-getting society that won’t stop, and people are drawn to the sort of zen aesthetics in my work,” she says. Indeed, her Instagram is a corner of minimalist aesthetics that feels authentic to her while offering visitors a sense of calm amid busy lives. For Levin, that authenticity—in person, on social media, in the studio—is the prerequisite for everything. “If I paint something I don’t like, it’s going to be very evident in the work. I need to finish a painting feeling happy about it being ready to leave my studio.” Art, she adds, touches almost every facet of life. “I’m more deliberate in how I live to insert my creativity in all aspects of my life. It’s intertwined. The work of an artist is never done: you’re constantly questioning, searching for answers, and working things out in the studio. It is not an easy thing, but it creates the most satisfaction. You live a fuller life, although it is harder. In the end, art is about one’s self-motivation and the drive to do it.”
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