9 Sep 2007
Jerome Thomas
You will be rewarded many times over if you read the current re-print of Dr. Russell Kirk's 1974 essay on the social commentary work of Renee Radell. It is in the University Bookman, Spring 2007 issue and becomes the springboard for interpretative musings of her works.
A comparison to T.S.Eliot is made by Dr. Kirk “Her armed vision discerns the boredom, and the horror, and the glory of this age. Her high talent with the brush transmutes a moment s experience into a timeless image. She is a painter possessing moral imagination.”
“The Tide,” is perhaps the most arresting and frightening of Mrs. Radell’ pictures. A half-dozen men and women, fully dressed, float dead or dying in an ebb-tide, unresisting. The life of spirit passed out of them long ago. They are marine counterparts of Eliot’s Hollow Men, in “death’s dream kingdom,” too flaccid of will for survival. They are the indifferent whom God has spewed out. “
Interpretation of her work has many shades as Radell would say.
17 Sep 2007
Anthony Semanik
Having personally known Ms. Radell as both friend and a colleague at Mercy College of Detroit during the 70s and 80s, I am familar with this and many other of her works, every one of which illustrates her ability to plumb the depths of the human condition through paint, ink, and other media. Her skill at not only capturing, but translating human emotion has always stunned me, and her work is a treasure of our times.
