About
Rachel uses landscape as a medium for remembrance, understanding, and reconstitution. Her largely abstract paintings connect her Siberian, English, and German families, and explore the grief that comes with the death of both places and people.
“I take inspiration from everything around me, from forests and trees to cobwebs, shadows, and cracks in the pavement.” Rachel is also inspired by 20th-century European art and theory, including the Bloomsbury group, Rayonists, Russian Avant-Garde, and German Expressionists.
Her process typically starts with photographs taken by herself or family members. The photograph, already a ‘re-presentation’, is sketched, then destroyed, then reconstructed, redrawn, and, finally, painted. This process acts as a ‘secondary mimesis’ that allows the original scene to transform into something new, something that can exist in the present moment as a memorial — or archive.
The resulting paintings are complex and colourful, walking the line between the perceived world and complete abstraction.