Walk into Renel Ploufe’s studio and your glance sweeps across a multitude of detailed, lovely cityscapes. But there’s one vertigo-drenched painting that grabs and won’t let go.
It looks like the last glimpse a New Yorker might have of his city as he plunges from the top of the Empire State Building into the Manhattan night. The darkness is splintered by golden skyscraper windows. A wild mishmash of brightly lit streets and red warning lights swirl across two panels.
“I call that painting ‘Darkness’ because, although I love cities, every city has dark places, alleys, the neighborhoods where people go in the day but won’t walk into at night,” says Ploufe. “In that painting, the darkness is taking over but you can still see the beauty.
Renel Plourfe’s painting “Fenetre” hangs in her studio at Chattanooga WorkSpace.“Yes, it does look like a last moment. But I like to play with that duality. Nothing is ever just one thing. Sometimes putting a dark topic in bright colors can make a visitor see something or think about something he would otherwise be afraid to look at too closely.”
Ploufe, 39, is a magician with paint, an artist who can paint grim and scary subjects in exquisite pastels and gorgeous neon and candy colors. She is one of those artists who can earn a living from her art full-time and have time to play with her twin preschool daughters.