The Series · 2024–2026

Everything They Didn't Tell Me

Ten paintings · four acts · acrylic and oil stick on yellow-ochre-toned canvas

I paint the conversations that society quietly ignores.

Everything They Didn't Tell Me began with a title that arrived before the paintings — a phrase for what nobody had passed down. The series is ten paintings in four acts: Micro, Collision, Macro, Resolution. They move from the interior — psychological, personal — outward to the systemic: labor, environment, exploitation, what a culture does to the people it needs.

I am self-taught as a painter. I came to it from theatre — which I studied at Columbia College Chicago — and I still build a picture like a scene: the face as a mask that slips, the body caught in a moment of revelation. I learned to see by drawing what was around me, long before I had words for it. I work in acrylic and oil stick on yellow-ochre-toned canvas, building portraits where memory presses against the systems that shaped it. The series moves in four acts because that's how I learned a story holds.

I don't paint from peace. I paint from the gap between what should be and what is — and from refusing to unsee it. What I want is for the person in front of the work to recognize something they already knew, and feel less alone in the knowing.

Biography

Andre René Epps Jr. (René), b. Chicago 1991, is a self-taught painter based in Atlanta. He trained in theatre at Columbia College Chicago — a grounding in character, staging, and the performed self that still drives his work. Working in acrylic and oil stick on yellow-ochre-toned canvas, he builds portraits where text, symbol, and figure collide — Black interior life pressed against the labor, environmental, and cultural systems that shape it. His ten-painting series, Everything They Didn't Tell Me (2024–2026), is structured in four acts, moving from the interior outward to the systemic.

Lineage

Built on a lineage of Black witness. In the image: Gordon Parks, who made the camera testify; Kerry James Marshall, who insisted on Black presence at the center of the picture; and Basquiat, whose collisions of text and figure on a single surface I work from directly. In the word: James Baldwin and Toni Morrison, who named what was never meant to be said.

The Work

The Ten Works

Four acts, read in sequence — from the interior outward to the systemic. Select any work to view it enlarged.

I Micro The interior — the self before the system reaches it.
II Collision Where the personal meets the systemic, head-on.
III Macro The system seen whole — labor, environment, the body politic.
IV Resolution What remains, and what holds, after the reckoning.

Inquire

For availability, prices, studio visits, or press, I'm glad to share full documentation and the complete catalogue.

Email the studio @rene.fineart