I love how small business-oriented it is. I love how beautiful it is in the spring. I love wandering around and discovering new places. What do you like and dislike about the city? I currently am doing large scale murals and creating my next mask project TBD. It created an experience and feeling that I can’t describe and I’ve been working towards creating more large scale, immersive work since. I created the piece in black and white and displayed it on an 8’x8′ panel in a gallery. I had worked for a year creating a piece called “503: Error Unknown.” I handmade 503 masks and layered them on top of each other to create a 3D piece that illustrated the feeling of searching for who you are and coming up blank. I am most proud of a piece I created in 2020. And so I create them every way possible, every medium possible. When I started making art, I was drawn to faces and feeling the expressions. That’s the primary sense I rely on in life. I’m known for my faces, the eyes specifically. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Being ok with being honest about who and what I am in the moment and being ok if nobody in the world understands.Īs you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. Most of it is getting over my self-talk and reframing my mind and going back to why I started in the first place.
When you’re whole heart is in it, all of your feelings and emotions and experiences, it can create a lot of insecurity. It definitely has not been a smooth road. It’s who I am.Īlright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome? Whether I doodle in my sketchbook, work on an oil painting, or develop a large scale experience, I can’t stop creating. It gave me a lot of freedom to not be perfect, to escape my brain and understand how I was thinking and feeling about things, and to chill out and focus on something that just made me feel good.Įver since, I have been making art every day. I would talk to the people that worked there and ask them what things did (I still do this). I would go to the art store and walk around and see what called out to me. I made 5 paintings a day for months and just played with everything I possibly could. I was taking care of myself on every level, something I had never done.
I wasn’t working and woke up every day and worked out and made art. I had dabbled here and there with painting (learning from youtube and books I would buy at the art store and just playing around with things I was inspired by), but all of a sudden I couldn’t use work to run from my emotions anymore and desperately needed an outlet. I ended up quitting my job shortly after that realization. I started working out and eating better and leaving work on time for the first time ever and began to realize how much I didn’t like what I was doing with my life. Nothing in my life felt like it was going right. I was managing retail stores at my corporate job and had worked my way up the ladder, but I was feeling so lost and unfulfilled. Anytime I would get a little time, I would find some kind of crafty thing to get my hands in. My creative side would always poke through though. My home didn’t really support that, though, so I never explored my creative side.Īs a grown-up, I worked a corporate job and put all of my time and energy into my work. Growing up, I constantly (and still do) have tons of ideas all the time. Hi Renee, so excited to have you with us today. Today we’d like to introduce you to Renee Steward.