Interior with Morning Light, 2019. Oil on canvas. 60 × 80 cm.
Lot 004 · Paintings
Interior with Morning Light
Sofia Renard
Year
2019
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
60 × 80 cm
Estimate
NZD 8,500–12,000
Painted in Renard's Auckland studio during the summer of 2019, this work depicts a corner of her apartment at a specific hour — the moment when morning light enters through a north-facing window and transforms the quality of the air in the room. The composition is deceptively simple: a table, a chair, a rectangle of light on the floor. But the paint surface is extraordinarily complex, built from dozens of thin glazes that give the light a luminosity that cannot be reproduced photographically. This is among the finest works from what the artist considers her most productive period.
Artist
Sofia Renard
Sofia Renard (b. 1987, Lyon) studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris before relocating to Auckland in 2014. Her practice centres on the domestic interior as a site of psychological complexity — spaces that appear ordinary but are charged with the residue of habitation. Working in oil on canvas, she builds surfaces of considerable material richness, applying and removing paint in a process she describes as "excavation rather than construction." Her work has been exhibited widely in New Zealand and France and is held in several private collections internationally.