Category: statements

This series explores trees with  a series of  shapes in their branches.

What if they only had one repeating  shape in their branches like squares, the number 4  or triangles or ovals. I was  influenced by Piet Mondrian’s series of tree drawings that were incredibly stylized. This led me to look at other artists and their way with trees. Gaudi in iron work, and Tom Thompson and his gnarly trees in Algonquin Park. The Group of sSven filled many canvases with North Ontario trees and they revered the spaces between the branches so much that they came first and the sky last… like stained glass, bringing the background into the foreground.

The trees took on a life of their own when I played with stencils filling in the spaces that the tree branches made by rolling ink into the negative spaces with a stencil. The peacock tree was born.

No two trees are ever exactly a like,  this series has over 200 prints all slightly different from each other. I dressed some in ribbon and sequins. Some have other stamps interlaced or caught in the branches.

November 2011

click to view the artwork that inspired this statement

The process was an investigation of some sketches made in 2010. The peacock is the mascot of Art Works Art School where I was the Assistant Director and where I currently teach. I wanted to investigate layering of dark equal tonal values with light tones on top to see how well they would vibrate or if they would be absorbed in the process. These are the results of those investigations. Many have either pure silver or gold ink or 20% metallic ink mixed in to give the illusion of the sheen of the true peacock feather. All works are printed on either Double Cougar or Canson Paper.

This latest series was completed December 2012.

January 2013

click here to view the entire series 

There is not enough love expressed in the world. This print and collage series explores how much love one can have for another, How big is big enough?

Lauren McKinley Renzetti

September 2013

click here to view how much I love you

The premise to printmaking is to make multiples of exactly the same image. I have been printmaking since 1988 and make an effort to occasionally follow this premise but I often ignore this print practice and utilize printmaking to create many similar images that are actually unique  from each other but still in series; through the use of colour shifts, different surfaces, inclusions , shifting the registration & different combinations  of stamps. The result is affordable one of a kind images. Look below the print for pricing.

click to view the artwork  that are prints

The human eye can observe many things, but what it could not see was either deemed as imagination, mythology or nonexistent; until the microscope. This series of paintings and prints investigates the view from a microscope. Images of wood cells, cross sections of trees, seed pods, pollen, and even everyday and not so everyday drugs. These micro views all have a beauty that is not usually seen by any but the chemist.

September 2013

click to view that artwork that inspired this statement

The push me -pull me of the sexes, the Male and Female in all of us. The love we have for our spouses, our muses, our lovers and friends. I try & utilize items found and kept from the road, or dumpsters, from family & friends, or from the sweepings of a studio. My larder is full of it and so my work needs to be made; to empty the space up & to create work based on the opportunity of what lies in these scattered shoe boxes.

This new work is inspired from art hanging in my bedroom. These new works are based on two paintings of my own eye and my husband, David’s eye. They were made in 1995, based on drawings made from looking into David’s eye and he looking into mine. There are aspects of both large paintings that give me ideas for many works. This is a sampling of those works. My intention was to use up as much junk in my basement, of my hoard of fabulous detritus so that we would have more space. I am revelling and rejoicing in my union with the love of my life and my love of interesting detritus.  One of the works we worked on together- entitled

 “Manic Fabrications  Directions: arrange me”.

It is s also the title of the show. This is the epitome of all that is me. Manic Fabrications was  partly created from materials cut by my father Donald Lloyd McKinley- a furniture manufacturer and designer, he died in 1997. Each diamond, and rounded handle are from pieces he intended for something.  He would stay up all night creating jigs to cut wood a certain way and then not finish the project- moving on to a new way of cutting wood. There were hundreds of pieces lying dormant and unused for 12-40 years. I am freeing them from their boxes; not as necessarily intended but, with, care, intention and certainty. He was manic in his fabrication s and for the past two months I have been enjoying that Manic nature in myself.

Works included are all made from a two month period -September-October 2009.

Lauren McKinley Renzetti

Maker of fabrications October 11, 2009.

click  to view the artwork that inspired this statement

This series is based on my interpretation of the moon, it’s various phase, the sun and the earth seen from outer space (using satellite false colour technology). The more removed you get from these planets (through technology) the more amazing and other worldly they can become. The manipulation man has on his surrounding plot of land, the more manufactured and square we seem from out space. What would another life form think of us and our insistence on the simple forms of square , rectangle, circle and the occasional pentagon? I am in awe, in simple wonder of nature and how strong willed it can be, and how man insists on trying to change the world around him. From this aerial view it is hard to see who is winning in this struggle, but we know who is winning don’t we?

1997 to present

click here to view Paintings

click here to view Prints

This series of mixed media works offered on NUUC’s walls are an ongoing dialogue about the relationship I have with art and religious iconography. These paper works are part of an ongoing dialogue from the “Art as Religion Series”  and are a combination of; handmade papers (made in 1985-6) along with imagery (I found most interesting in the early 90’s). The culmination of these works is time (I had in the 2000’s) putting the concepts altogether and then printing, sewing, collaging, painting and gluing on top of everything else.

They are fragile works.

For many reasons.

The paper they are affixed to has no sizing…and so                                                                     very delicate in nature.

This frailty is important, I chose not to frame them.

Ideas are fragile.

Art in churches is not behind glass.

It is right here, in the tangible space of right now.

I extend my heart, my hope, my trust

that you will respect and protect them.

I do not ask that you agree with my ideas,

merely, to take the time to ponder them.

-may 2010

click to view the artwork that inspired this statement

Foundation was inspired by many source materials including Medieval Manuscripts, Greek Mathematics, the Golden Section , Architectural Drawings, Leonardo da Vinci’s sketchbooks and our early learning curriculum. For me, the power and the  “holiness” of these sacred forms emerge from the care and love taken by the artist, and not so much the subject mater itself. A child takes as much pride and even reverence for writing his first alphabet as many American s have for Thomas Jefferson’s drawings and writings   as an architect and statesman; or Catholics have for the depictions of the Virgin Mary. I like to look beyond those ephemeral elements and celebrate the integrity and sheer beauty of the work, forever human and infallible. Using juxtaposing images on the same canvas I draw attention to these similarities acknowledging them, thanking them, for being there, to even be noticed. These images, no matter how mundane or truly glorious; are the Foundations of our being.

1998

click to view the  artwork that inspired this statement