Sophie Reneman

Sophie Reneman is a Dutch contemporary artist (Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 1977) who started her career later in life. She combines her artistic work with show and art direction.
Reneman’s mostly abstract work is characterized by its rebellious tone and confidently sexy proclivity. Working in acrylic, ink and chalk, she uses knives as brushes on a hardboard canvas.
Coming from a long line of artists, it would only be a matter of time before Reneman started to confide in the canvas. Reneman fondly remembers the studio of her grandfather ‘Noekie’ – the dutch sculptor Jan Willem Rädecker, son and student of painter and sculptor John Rädecker (most famous for his Monument on the Dam). ‘As a child, I was mesmerized by his workshop. It was pure magic. We’d visit during the weekends, and I’d always end up in his shop going on another creative adventure.
Being a deliberate autodidact, Sophie purposefully challenges the confines of ‘art’. She breaks down its form, its context, its content. To find, in its rawest form, a way to share uniquely particular sensations that deeply move her audience. And that also have a refreshing self-awareness without being self-important.
Reneman’s work finds its most breathtaking meaning (and fun) in its imperfections. ‘Imperfections are sexy!’, says Sophie, ‘Creating art is an emotional outlet. I make sexy, abstract art inspired by the female body and the female mind which are deliciously complicated. I visualize what goes on in my head.’
Sophie almost exclusively paints freethinking, sexy, deliciously complicated female nudes. ‘I mean, if it were up to me, that’s how I would stride the earth: bare-naked and loud. Wouldn’t the world be more festive and gorgeous, when disrobed?