Artist Statement
My paintings explore anxiety, attachment, and intimacy in my routine life. I play between building a representational portrayal rooted in reality and searching for a dreamy equivalent. l paint in loose layers that reveal traces of past decisions between firm and final marks. The vibration of the forms, shifting into place, adds to the depiction of instability. Heightened color laying with fleshy neutrals reinforces the edge of distortion. The paint and the image are equally insistent.

My self-portraits and portraits of my husband use subtleties in everyday life to actualize states of vulnerability. The most private spaces within the refuge of the home, the shower and the bed, offer moments that run parallel to active living, but do not intersect it. I paint scenes of this type of tangential experience, as we recede, and live in our heads. I am newly inspired by imagery in my own wedding and marriage story that reflects the roles, tensions, and expectations, societal and personal, in heterosexual coupling.

Currently I am disrupting classic oil painting process by incorporating printmaking techniques. Beginning with small paintings on panel, I transfer paint from one surface to another, including panels, paper, and canvas. I am experimenting with scaling up, painting on larger panels and plexiglass, and printing on canvas. In these slowly built up paintings, marks are interrupted and solidified at different levels of representation, forming between control and surprise.
 

Biography
Rachel Rickert (b. 1990) is a Brooklyn based figurative painter who received her MFA from the New York Studio School (2015), and her BFA from Washington University in St. Louis (2012). Recent Artist Residencies include the Vermont Studio Center (Feb 2020) and the James Castle House, Boise, ID, culminating in a solo exhibition in March 2019. Rickert has recently shown at John Davis Gallery (solo), Hudson, NY, Danese/Corey, New York, NY, M. David & Co., Brooklyn, NY, Jill Newhouse Gallery, New York, NY, and E.Tay Gallery (solo), New York, NY. Rickert’s paintings explore anxiety, attachment, and intimacy in routine life. The paint and the image are equally insistent.