Gallery North

Renee Reichert

BIOGRAPHY

Renée Reichert is an artist, illustrator, interior designer and art educator. Known for her lush velvety pastels, which often take on a narrative fantasy quality, her illustrations have been the recipients of New York ADDY Citations, Summit Creative Awards and a Society of Illustrators' Certificate of Merit. Her piece Cat Dreams was selected for inclusion in Spectrum 8: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art. She has illustrated the children's picture books The Cat Came Back and This is the Wind, both published by Roaring Brook Press and reviewed by School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Booklist and Kirkus Reviews. Kirkus called The Cat Came Back "A fine showcase, and a memorable children's debut, for Reichert." Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions and is a part of many private collections.

Renée earned her B.F.A. in Design and has worked for both interior design and architectural firms, including Mancini Duffy and Spector Group. She has 12 years of interior design experience working primarily on corporate projects for high-end Fortune 500 companies. Specializing in rendering, while at ADLIII she received the Archi 2008 Benjamin Moore Color Award for her renderings of the Katrina Cottages. Recent interests include designing unique architectural elements.

With her M.S. in Art Education, as an artist-in-residence Renée has designed art programs for elementary school students and at-risk teens. She has taught picture book illustration to adults and visits schools, libraries and other public venues to talk about her art and techniques.

Artist Statement

Whether the seed for the idea of the image I create comes from someone else’s text or my own mind, the finished piece almost always ends up telling a story. As a visual storyteller, I see a narrative in each work; something has come before and something after. My hope is to inspire the viewer to create their own story - to be surprised, excited, to smile, laugh - to stir the imagination and perhaps see the world differently. To ask ourselves, “What if?"