Influenced by both the personal and the political, Renee Couture draws inspiration from the historical and social landscape of place. Using her own rural community as a starting point, she articulates the complexity and range of the public’s relationship with their nearby landscape.
Couture graduated from Buena Vista University (Storm Lake, IA) with a BA in Studio Art and Spanish. Couture has taught a range of art courses in children’s camps in the United States and abroad. She earned her MFA in Visual Art from Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier, VT. Couture currently teaches art at a small community college and volunteers at the local arts center.
Couture’s work has been exhibited nationally in group exhibitions and as a solo artist. She has received two Career Opportunity Grants from the Oregon Arts Commission, and two Individual Arts Grants from the Douglas Country Cultural Coalition. Couture was a featured artist on OPB’s Oregon Art Beat, and has completed artist residencies at Jentel (Banner, WY), Playa (Summer Lake, OR), Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts (Nebraska City, NE), Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT), and Djerassi Resident Artist Program (Woodside, CA).
Currently, Couture lives on seven acres in rural southern Oregon with her husband, two dogs and two cats. She works out of a retrofitted 20 foot travel traveler turned studio space located in her garden. When she’s not in her studio working or taking her dogs for hikes in the mountains surrounding her home, she’s in her garden growing food much of the food she and her husband eat during the year.