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Red-Yellow-Blue: Work by Nicole Derenne

Presented by World's Smallest Gallery at Urban Stampede

October 19-November 25, 2006

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The artwork on view at the World’s Smallest Gallery features three themes: the presence and absence of texture, the struggle to identify a career path, and the challenge to move beyond figural work into abstraction. With the exception of Waiting, the work was created in 2001, after I had graduated college and before I began my graduate study in art history. The figural works, Look, Speak, and Hear, were explorations in a painting technique that required the use of a palette knife to create texture, as well as early attempts to portray my search for an identity in the workforce. Later works, such as the Worker series and the Line series, resulted from efforts to remove the figure from my work, while still exploring my emergence into the workforce. The three themes of this show – texture, workplace identity, and removal of the figure – were central to my artistic development at the time. I found the palette knife to be a preferred painting tool. Look and Speak were created solely with the palette knife, while Study was created with a palette knife and a brush. I found this technique to be lively, and far more productive in creating texture than other painting methods. In the Worker series, I created paintings with very flat surfaces in an effort to further search for my identity in the workforce. In this series, I challenged myself to not rely on texture or the figure to relay the content. I found this task very difficult, and, in Worker 1 and Worker 2, I incorporated the figure as silhouette drawings on board, which were pasted onto the painted surface. In Worker 3, recognizing that I was still attached to the figure, I attempted to create a piece with limited reference to the human form. Instead of pasting drawings of figures onto the surface, I pasted images cut from an office supply catalog and then painted over the pasted images. The figure did not become the prominent feature of the work, but a subtle component. In the Line series, I created work that was devoid of the figure and re-incorporated the rich texture from earlier work. I began by covering each canvas with a thick layer of paint in three different colors. On each canvas I placed one or more lines that project from the surface, making the physical texture of the work the primary focus. In this series, the figure was absent, and work focused on the physical surface. These works were created at a time in which I began researching the possibility of graduate study in art history, and making concrete plans to begin a career in the arts. The most recent work, Waiting, created in 2006, explores my identity as a worker and as a parent, and the precarious balancing act that this identity requires. This work also represents a return to painting (I had not painted for nearly four years), and the further exploration in texture and in color. As the exhibition continues, it is my hope to add a couple of works in progress that continue to explore these issues. Nicole Derenne lives in Grand Forks with her husband, and is the mother of a beautiful daughter. She serves as Executive Director of the North Valley Arts Council, and teaches art history at the University of North Dakota. Derenne received a BA in Biology at Alverno College in Milwaukee, WI and received her MA in Art History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She can be reached at (701) 775-8302 or at nicolederenne@novac.org.