Watercolors by Rene Capone
Born in September of 1978 in Niskayuna, a small town in the mid-eastern area of New York state, Rene Carol Capone is an American figurative painter.. He attended the Parsons School of Design in New York City on a merit scholarship in the fine arts. Upon graduation in 2000, Capone moved to San Francisco to study at the San Francisco Art Institute.
Known for his depiction of the human figure in mysterious, erotic, or whimsical circumstances, Capone often uses themes from his favorite myths and literary tales in which to place his characters. He began his career as an artist creating dreamlike, sensual, often homoerotic images of young men on deep, personal quests for love, identity, and their place in the world.
After a four year hiatus from his fine art work in which he studied the topic of child abuse, Rene Capone self-published his first authored and illustrated graphic novel, “The Legend of Hedgehog Boy”. More than just a queer fairytale of a boy in search of his identity, the tale dealt with the issue of child abuse and its consequences, both psychological and physical. The story argued in favor of self-expression and the reconstruction of one’s life after a traumatic event.
In 2014, Capone published this illustrated novel entitled “A Boy Named”, the story of boy, now more comfortable in his skin, on a quest for identity in his world. The tale is told through eighty-five illustrations by Capone as well as a collection of portraits of him taken by various photographers. Also in 2014, Capone did thirteen illustrations for Dorian Carbone’s children’s book “A Turtle Who Likes to Eat Fish”.
An overall retrospective of Rene Capone’s work from 1999 to 2011 was published under the title “Any Given Moment: The Artwork of René Capone”. His most recent publication is a hardcover art book of Capone’s work from 1997 to 2018, entitled “A Boy Named Patience”, which was published in 2021. The artwork features the words of poet Dave Russo alongside the paintings. Capone’s artwork has also been published on book covers, including publications in France and Israel, and will be used for a series of books entitled “The Goldberg Variations”, issued by arnolandpress.com.
He took a four-year absence from creating fine art to dig deep within his psyche and painful childhood to create a series of paintings that inspired his graphic novel The Legend of Hedgehog Boy. The novel struck a deep chord within many readers, and it transformed the artist as well.– The Advocate