Renee Stout

Early life

Stout was born in Junction City, Kansas to a family that enjoyed creative activities. Her mother did needlework. Her father, a mechanic and steelworker, liked to tinker. An uncle was a fine-art painter. When Stout was one year old, her family returned to the East Liberty neighborhood in Pittsburgh. She took weekend classes at the Carnegie Museum of Art as a child, which she credits for exposing her to African art. Writing of her pivotal encounter with an nkisi nkondi, "I saw a piece there that had all these nails in it...And I think once I got exposed to more African art in my travels as I got older, I found that I started going back to the pieces like that."

Career

Stout attended Carnegie Mellon University, graduating with a BFA in 1980, where she followed the realist style of Edward Hopper and Richard Estes. After moving to Washington, D.C. in 1985, Stout was exposed to the gritty reality of urban drug use and racism–themes which she has incorporated into her work. Stout also explores her African American heritage in her art. Through the African diaspora, as well as the world and her immediate environment, Stout finds the inspiration to create works that encourage self-examination, self-empowerment and self-healing, harnessing the belief systems of African peoples and their descendants.

Additionally, Stout uses imaginary characters to create a variety of artwork, some of which include: painting, mixed media sculpture, photography and installation. Stout is the recipient of awards from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, and has shown her work in solo and group shows throughout the United States, and in England, Russia and the Netherlands.

Artistic style

Combining vestigial African American customs and street culture with the theatrical and carnivalesque, Stout's oeuvre consists of handmade assemblages, installations and tableaus, vibrant paintings, prints, and photographs– all of which are employed in the creation of complex narratives featuring characters conceived by the artist. Her artistic influences include Yoruba sculpture, and the nkisi (sacred objects) of the Central African Congo Basin, which she first saw at the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh in her youth.

Other major subjects in her work often include Haitian Vodou, the space and culture of New Orleans and the creole Voodoo practitioner Marie Laveau. In an interview conducted by Dr.O in her book Tales of the Conjure Woman, Renee Stout asserts that in order to open the conversations, regarding the ancestry of African American culture, she will continue inspiring her works on themes such as African-derived spiritual belief systems and Hodoo. She also admits to having to "occupy a weird space within the art world--a place that has more possibilities, both in energy and spirit" Tales of the Conjure Woman presents an artistic interpretation of hoodoo and voodoo that unmasks these mysterious and lasting traditions. Channeling her alter ego, Fatima Mayfield, a fictitious herbalist and fortune-teller, looks to these cultural traditions as a jumping-off point for developing her own distinct visual language, resulting in a complex body of work that is meticulously constructed and laden with symbolism.

Stout's sculptural installations often include materials used in the practice of voodoo. Handmade potions, roots and herbs, found objects, bones, and feathers are combined with painted and sculptural elements. Not limited to ritualistic and fold references, Stout's work suggests a diverse group of American artists as influences– the photorealist painter Richard Estes, sculptor Joseph Cornell, installation artist Edward Kienholz, and assemblage artist Betye Saar. Their impact is apparent in Stout's use of trompe l'oeil painting, found-object tableaus, and handmade mechanical and totemic forms. Stout's early experience as a professional sign painter and ongoing interest in handmade commercial signage comes through in various pieces as well.

Works in exhibition

She has participated in numerous exhibitions including several exhibitions at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. and at the De Beyerd Museum in the Netherlands. Her work is in numerous collections including the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota; the Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan; and the Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland. Her awards include two Pollock Krasner Foundation Awards, The Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Regional Visual Arts Fellowship, a Tryon Center for Visual Arts Residency, and the Driskell Prize given by the High Museum of Art. In 2012 she was named the winner of 2012 Janet and Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize.

Andrea Barnwell Brownlee, Ph.D., a director for the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art in Georgia has recently been involved with one of Renee Stout's larger projects, The Thinking Room exhibition, and a book, Renee Stout: Tales of the Conjure Woman, which "brings together more than sixty recent works and draws viewers into a dynamic, complex, and richly textured web. This exhibition of fictitious tales and courageous ingenuity offers a rare and special opportunity for viewers to explore the mythic, folk, and spiritual traditions that inform and shape Stout's complex world view and temporarily suspend disbelief"