What it’s all about
ARTIST STATEMENT
While many see rainy days as gloomy, I see rain as necessary for new life, pause, and renewal. I paint rainy abstracted impressions of land, sky, sea, and seasons to show new perspectives on finding tranquility and beauty in dark and stormy times. I see how sheets of pouring raindrops distort scenes beyond, blending colors and shapes together to drip down glass. Colors seem more saturated in rain, and the storm interrupts everything.
After I create detailed pointillism landscapes, I use gravity, stand-oil, and a brush to wipe them out, leaving a flawed and uniquely unpredictable outcome, that I then reshape into something embracing imperfect beauty and calm. I take on the changes that come from working intensely on editing and blending the remaining drips and paint smudges, returning to the canvas every hour or two, over the course of days, to react and adjust to how the paint has shifted.
My process embraces the contrasting elements of attempting control while letting go. In today’s increasingly chaotic and uncertain world, I want a person to be able to look through my rainy day “windows” and find a peaceful, contemplative moment, to take space to breathe and reflect. Our experience in the storm deepens our experience of sunny days.
ARTIST BIO
Rachel Brask is a contemporary abstract expressionist painter of rainy days. Brask's reimagined oil landscapes express the abstracted calm, chaos and contemplation of rainy days. She's exhibited in solo, invitational, and juried shows around New England, in Italy, and with work in private collections in Italy and the UK. Some recent shows include RI Abstractionists at the Pitcher-Goff House, Boston International Fine Art Show, Paradise City Arts Festival and The Foundry Show.
Brask has been an artist-in-residence at the Golden Apple Art Residency in Maine, Truro’s Castle Hill Center for the Arts Edgewood Farm, the Tryon International Equestrian Center. in North Carolina. She has received several honors, including selection as a Directors’ Pick “Showstopper” at the Paradise City Arts Festival, second place award in exhibition, "Imagine Water,” and previously, as Best in Show for the “Autumn Rain” painting that inspired her current body of work. She has been honored to be selected for the Curatorial Mentorship Program and the Founders Award by Art League Rhode Island, and is an alum of AS220’s Practice/Practice program. Rachel earned a B.A. in art from Houghton College, with concentrations in painting, graphic design & photography. Rachel creates original oil paintings, commissions, and teaches private art lessons and workshops. Her studio is in East Providence, RI.
HOW IT ALL STARTED
Many years ago, Rachel Brask was in the studio, and it was raining outside, through the windows on a beautiful autumn day. She grabbed the nearest paint brush, oil paint, and some nearby stand oil, and created a thing to capture that feeling of a fall autumn day viewed through this window — without overthinking what she was created. She just mixed some colors, put some daubs on canvas, and used some brush and standoil to carefully wipe it all out. That painting, the original titled, “Autumn Rain,” went on to win the Best of Show Award in a local exhibition, and it later sold to a collector, many inquiries came later for prints of that painting. In her sketchbook, Brask made several drawings and color studies for other ideas for exploring painting rain: winter rain, ocean rain, summer rain, etc. But she never got to try these other sketchbook ideas, until…
Nearly a decade later (and many non-objective abstract expressionist pieces later), a new client came out of the woodwork to ask to buy this “Autumn Rain” painting she saw on the website. Since it was already sold, this client worked with Rachel to create a commission that came pretty close to the original. But it had been nearly 10 years since she had made the “Autumn Rain” painting, so there was much trial and error involved in creating the new rain painting, trying to get the ratio of thick paint daubs to oil right, of gravity vs brush pressure, of what was too much or too little of anything. The third time was the charm, and the final painting was created and the client loved it.
It was at this point, Rachel thought that it was a good time to give herself just one year to work out some of these other “rain” inspired oil paintings.
Well, it’s been over 5 years now, and counting, and she keeps having more an more ideas for approaching rain paintings….
STUDIOS
Rachel Brask’s primary studio is located in East Providence, Rhode Island, where she creates her oil paintings and teaches private art lessons out of her studio. Studio visits are by appointment only, as her studio is not always in a guest-ready state of organization. Rachel will also set up her mobile studio at artist residencies, plein air events, and art shows, expos, and open studios events.
Rachel loves getting postal mail to her studio! If you would like to send fan mail, care packages, cards, chocolate, or art supplies, her studio postal address is:
Rachel Brask Studio, LLC
P.O. Box 16341
Rumford, RI 02916
NEW STUDIO IN BOSTON, MA
as of March 2024!
Rachel Brask Studio now has a studio location in Boston:
450 Harrison Avenue, Studio 410 (4th Floor), Boston, MA
Open Studios will be every First Friday of each month in conjunction with SoWa First Friday Open Studios, and select Sundays, and by appointment. Text, email or call to make an appointment or to confirm if the studio is open.
"A lovely form of magic emerges from the works on view, when you allow yourself to stop for a moment and let your emotions become liberated in Rachel's colorful world."
— Eric J. Auger, curator.