Rachael Wren
Brooklyn, NY
Website
www.rachaelwren.com
Social Media
Instagram
How would you describe your work?
I make oil paintings that combine elements of landscape and geometric abstraction. The work evokes an experience of landscape space, light, and atmosphere within a gridded structure. I am interested in capturing the physical and emotional sensations of being in nature, rather than depicting any particular location. In my work, hints of landscape emerge and then dissolve into layers of subtly shifting colors and brush marks. The accumulation of these marks creates a dense, shimmering space with a quiet visual vibration. Each painting is built up slowly, with many layers, and that time embedded in the work invites viewers to slow down in front of it, the way one might stop and breathe deeper upon being in nature.
What inspires you?
I’m inspired by what I see. I am always looking at and absorbing the world around me, especially in terms of color. The dense atmospheres of my paintings have their source in the years I lived in Seattle, when I was a graduate student at The University of Washington. The air there had a very particular presence, which I often think seeped into me and never left. In Brooklyn, nature doesn’t feel as big or all-encompassing as it does in the Pacific Northwest, but I’m still struck by small, unexpected moments of beauty every day — fall leaves on the sidewalk, the edge of the darkening sky against a building at sunset. These kinds of color relationships spark ideas for new paintings. I am also inspired by the process of painting itself. I’m continually learning and understanding new things as I paint. Within a narrow range of parameters, ideas keep opening up, and one painting leads the way to the next.
Can you speak about your process?
I approach my work from two different angles, color and structure, which I see as two different ways of thinking. Structure is about the geometry of the piece, and is connected to drawing for me. It references the ordered, the rational, and the intellectual. I develop the structure of a painting by doing lots of diagrammatic sketches, playing around with different configurations of the verticals, the “trees”, on the grid. Color, the aspect of my work that is most informed by landscape, speaks to the random, the emotional, and the intuitive. I begin with an idea about a color relationship I’m interested in exploring and start laying down small brush strokes of those colors all over the canvas, corresponding to the structure I’ve decided to work with. I build up the painting in overlapping layers of these color-marks, each layer responding to the one that came before. I never know in advance how many layers a painting will need or what each one will be. Sometimes the color idea that I’ve started with carries me through the painting, but other times it changes quite a lot from beginning to end. When the structure and the color, the geometry and the landscape, fuse together, a type of alchemy happens and the painting comes alive for me.
How did you become interested in art?
I always liked drawing and making things when I was a kid, but I didn’t know that art was something you could keep doing. Growing up, I didn’t know any artists. In high school, I started taking a painting class once a week after school, and in college I got to know the MFA painting students — little by little, I realized that there was a way to continue, and that I’d rather be painting than doing anything else.
Do you have any favorite artists, movies, books, or quotes?
Agnes Martin, Jake Berthot, and Andrew Forge have been three of my most important touchstones for many years. Each of them developed a personal language of abstraction that also maintained a connection to the natural world. That thread is moving to me and is something that guides my own work.
What advice do you have for younger artists?
Don’t discount the things that come naturally to you because they seem easy. Instead, lean into them and develop them — they are often your greatest gifts, and what will make your work uniquely yours.
Any more thoughts about art, creativity, or anything else you would like to share?
Over the years, I have come to see painting as a sustained practice of deep questioning, where I am challenged to look beyond my initial perceptions, beyond what I think I know, and stay open to complexity, nuance, and the possibility of more than one thing being true at the same time.
