I met Emmanuelle Renard for the first time through her Pérégrinations dans les citadelles (wanderings through citadels) in 2011. One of them features a human head with goat horns set on a checkerboard. Her challenge as a painter is there, to mix the irreconcilable, the animal and the human, a kitchen floor and a checkerboard, with wandering and isolation being a part of the title. Emmanuelle Renard is a traveller in the space of the canvas. Her imagery is contemporary but she secretes her own pigments like the old masters. She paints against a background of earth, stone and the prehistory of art. She names Caravaggio, Rembrandt, and Goya, those through whom painting began again, and carries the memory of humans who created pigments in the darkness of caves.
Patrick Cady
