Works in this exhibition mark a new direction for the artist in unusually long and narrow vertical paintings made of several panels: a quadriptych, two triptychs and a diptych. Renouf found that the vertical paintings could be related to through one’s body. When standing before the artwork “my eyes were then led to read up and down the painting giving me a sense of movement.” Since Renouf identifies sounds with movement, titles of the paintings combine sounds with the natural elements.

Notable, too, in this exhibition is the reapplication of removed threads in almost all of the paintings. Renouf points out that a removed thread is naturally curved. By reapplying these threads, the canvas is given a freer, more organic character in contrast to the straight grid of the canvas. It also creates a delicate bas-relief which increases the painting’s affinity to sculpture.

The show also features a number of paintings and works on paper in the traditional square format. One of these is the 2014 painting, Threshold - December Sounds, which presented itself to Renouf as a completed work at an unusually early stage in its making, after the dark blue ground colour had been applied and sanded. Renouf cites the “unique perfection” of this painting as ironically an inspiration to look beyond the square format, leading her to the creation of the multi-panelled works made up of the long vertical canvases.

American, born in Mexico City and educated in New York (MFA Columbia University; BA Sarah Lawrence College), Edda Renouf now lives and works in Paris. Her paintings and drawings are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York as well as the British Museum, London and the Centre Pompidou, Paris. This is Edda Renouf’s second exhibition at Annely Juda Fine Art.