Renée Estée (b. 1993) is an Australian-born, New York-based artist. She’s a recent Hunter MFA Graduate (Dec 2022) and graduated with a BFA Honors (First Class Honors) from the Victorian College of the Arts (Melbourne, Aus) in 2016.
Linking ideas and imagery of the Australian Outback, Hauntology, Orphism and contemplations of afterlife beliefs, Estée’s practice highlights myth-making and rituals surrounding mourning, celebration and commemoration. Operating as visual love letters and epitaphs, her large-scale oil paintings coalesce figuration and abstraction to conjure spaces where she can commune with the deceased and contend with future loss. Taking on apparitional characteristics; figures materialize from layered, loose, gestural mark-making that merge in and out of their surrounding environments, whilst animals wander in the peripheries, simultaneously observing departures and transformations taking place. Carving out spaces from thick impasto marks alongside thin washes and surface stains, Estée considers painting’s ability to omit and transfigure.
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Renée Estée in her studio in New York, USA, 2023. Image courtesy of the artist and COMA, Sydney.
