RENÉE STOUT

Renée Stout (American, born 1958) grew up in Pittsburgh where she received her B.F.A. from Carnegie-Mellon University. In 1985, she moved to Washington, D.C. and began to explore the spiritual roots of her African American heritage through her work. Eventually, Stout became the first American artist to exhibit in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art. By combining personal experience from her immediate environment with inspiration drawn from belief systems of the African Diaspora and its descendants, Stout creates work that encourages self-betterment through examination, empowerment, and healing.

Being an artist with the constant need for self-discovery and an understanding of the human condition, Stout utilizes a variety of media, including painting, mixed media sculpture, photography and installation as her process of questioning. The lives of her imaginary characters serve as a vehicle of discussion, allowing the artist to role play and more readily confront issues in an ongoing narrative of "who we are as a society" at the current point in time.

Renée Stout received her B.F.A. from Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA.  She is a recipient of the Women’s Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award (2018), Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize (2012), David C. Driskell Prize (2010), a Joan Mitchell Award (2005), The Pollock Krasner Foundation Award (1991 & 1999), the Anonymous Was a Woman Award (1999), and The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (1993).