Renee Robbins is a Chicago-based visual artist who layers biomorphic forms to create detailed otherworldly environments. She has been awarded public art commissions with Chicago Public Art Group, Wabash Arts Corridor, and Illinois’ Art-In-Architecture program. She has exhibited widely, including exhibitions at Lois Lambert Gallery, Santa Monica, CA; Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Batavia, IL; Firecat Projects, Chicago, IL; and the Alden B Dow Museum of Science and Art, Midland, MI. The Chicago Gallery News featured her work as a ‘Young Chicago Artist’ to watch. The forms in her paintings have been classified by a diatom taxonomist in an artist feature on the US Diatoms database at the University of Colorado. Her public art projects have been featured on PBS WTTW’s Chicago Tonight, Fox 32, and in Chicago Magazine. Robbins received her MFA from Michigan State University and a BFA from University of Kentucky. She has been working Renee Robbins in front of Tilt-a-Whirl in Chicago for more than a decade.

Renee Robbins creates detailed visual environments that consider the complex relationships between humans, nature, and the cosmos. Through painting, she explores the worlds of tiny cells, flowering botanicals, aquatic species, and celestial bodies. Moving between the real and imagined, Robbins’ work brings together microscopic and telescopic viewpoints. She positions hybrid floral/faunal forms within a space that simultaneously evoke the deep sea and the cosmos. By creating associations between things that are seemingly disparate, such as plankton and stars, her work presents a question or sparks a curiosity about the universe. In this way, her images respond to biodiversity and suggest a sense of our place within the natural world and create wonder.