Rachael Wren

What is the cHURCH? | Rachael Wren | Artist Website

November 8, 2015
11:00am

Rachael Wren’s paintings combine elements of both landscape and geometric abstraction. Join us as she discusses the evolution of her work: from representational landscape paintings to pure abstractions, and now, more recently, to a synthesis of the two.

“My paintings use geometry to structure ephemeral atmospheric and natural phenomena. I am intrigued by moments in nature when air has a tangible presence, almost becoming visible – fog playing between tree branches, light peeking through clouds, the darkening sky before a thunderstorm. At these times, form and space seem to mingle; edges disappear and atmosphere becomes all-encompassing. To reproduce this sensation of dense, particulate space, I work with an accumulation of small, repeated brush marks of subtly shifting color. These individual marks echo the fundamental particles that compose all matter. They hover, shimmer, and vibrate between the crisp lines of an anchoring grid, an interplay that suggests the universal duality between structure and randomness, order and chaos, the known and the unknown.”

Rachael Wren received a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and an MFA from the University of Washington. She has had solo shows at The Painting Center, Schema Projects, the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and Providence College. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the Weatherspoon Art Museum, the National Academy Museum, Jeff Bailey Gallery, Geoffrey Young Gallery, Trestle Gallery, and the Fosdick-Nelson Gallery at Alfred University, among many others. Rachael is the recipient of the Julius Hallgarten Prize from the National Academy Museum and an Aljira Fellowship. She has been awarded residencies at Chashama North, the Saltonstall Foundation, the Byrdcliffe Art Colony, the Vermont Studio Center, the Anderson Center, and the Artist House at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.