Business Finance Media Technology Policy Wealth Insights Interviews

Art Art Fairs Art Market Art Reviews Auctions Galleries Museums Interviews

Lifestyle Nightlife & Dining Style Travel Interviews

Power Lists Nightlife & Dining Art A.I. PR

About About Observer Advertise With Us Reprints

Painter Renée Levin’s Unhurried Eye

The artist's hyperrealist depictions of shells, petals and pearls are less about beauty than about what we miss when we're too busy to pay attention to the world around us.

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.”

Sign Up For Our Daily Newsletter

Thank you for signing up!

By clicking submit, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge we may use your information to send you emails, product samples, and promotions on this website and other properties. You can opt out anytime.

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.”........

© Observer