Studying Other Works Unlocks Hopkins Artist’s Creativity
C.J. Renner’s work, ‘With Apologies to Beside the Sea,’ was selected for the State Fair Fine Arts show.
Hopkins artist C.J. Renner isn’t oblivious to what many people might think about the process he used to create “With Apologies to Beside the Sea”—a charcoal and pastel work he showed this year at the State Fair. Renner’s work is inspired by a piece from Robert Motherwell’s “Beside the Sea” series—a group of paintings the artist made by splashing oil paint against rag paper. While Motherwell crafted those works in a moment, Renner painstakingly duplicated each of those paint splashes. “In a way, it’s an absurdity,” Renner said. Renner, who’s also a writer, has always had a fondness for Motherwell because of the way he chronicled the same Expressionism movement in which he participated. But while Motherwell and his colleagues used doodling …
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