“Over the past five years, Anonymous Citizens has explored how color shapes perception, identity, and connection. I focus on the relational nature of color—how a hue shifts in response to those around it—mirroring human interactions and the tension between individuality and collective identity. Escaping one reality and entering another is where I find meaning within the complexity of the mind and its emotions. Anonymous Citizens investigates interior and exterior spaces where observation, memory, and imagination intersect. These interactions reflect the rhythmic light and shifting patterns of the natural environment. The series questions the “me” versus the “we” and the potential for shifting identities, using color relationships to explore presence and absence within a traditional portrait structure. Responding to layers, I aim to trace the poetic exchanges of painterly language, offering a visual framework for understanding the networks that shape experience.”

Renée Bouchard, b.1976 to French Canadian parents, was awarded the prestigious Pollock-Krasner and Puffin Foundation grants in 2023 after receiving an MFA in visual art from the Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2021. She received her BFA in painting, with honors, from the Maine College of Art in 1999. Other grants include: the Vermont Creation Grant and the Robert Rauschenburg Power of Art Grant, with additional nominations, including from the Dedalus Foundation and the Barbara Smail Award from the Burlington City Arts in Vermont. She has held residencies at the Vermont Studio Center,  the Kate Millett Art Colony for Women, the Cooper Union and at Collar Works in Troy, NY. Her paintings have been included in Russell Sage College’s Opalka Gallery, Artspace New Haven, Southern Vermont College, Connecticut College, the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts Gallery 51, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the Vermont State House, the Lyman Allyn Museum, the Bennington Museum, and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art. Her work has been reviewed in The Country and Abroad, Vermont Digger and Art New England. Her upcoming solo show, Renée Bouchard: Anonymous Citizens opens June 28th, 2025 from 6-8:30 at Kiddie Pool’s Project Space in Albany, NY with special guest, John DiVeva Halpern speaking from the Institute for Cultural Activism International at 7:00 pm. Renée is an adjunct drawing professor at SUNY Adirondack.