ABSTRACTED RAINY MOMENTS SERIES – ARTIST STATEMENT

When you look out through a window on a rainy day — what do you see? When I look through a window during a rain storm, I study how the sheets of rain pouring down the panes causes distortion of the view outside. The rain flow abstracts the lens through which an observer sees the outside world in that moment. Colors blend together, articulated lines and shapes become blurred, and the motion of the continuing rain makes the scene even more dynamic. In these moments, I’m reminded of a poem by Abraham Sutzkever, that these colors, these moments, “…all this illuminated by the rain.”

Through these oil paintings on canvas, I seek to capture a single abstracted moment between a rainy day and its observer; between a moment in reality and its abstract experience. In the process of creating these images, I chose to use oil paint because of its slow drying time, incorporating a hefty mass of stand oil, allowing gravity to continue its work on the paintings long after I’ve stepped away from the easel — pulling the colors and paint with it as it continued its slow descent down the surface of the canvas. Even after the paint has dried, the evidence of these viscous drips have become suspended in motion, frozen in the gradual downward crawl. The viscous texture of this drip beckons the viewer in to experience the texture of this rainy moment, making tactile the tangible.

More work in this series is currently in progress. If you’d like to see new paintings in this series as they are finished, please subscribe to studio email updates. 

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[SOLD] ©Rachel Brask, Rainy Moment 03 (Rain in Early Spring). Oil on canvas, 40″x30″. Frequent and abundant rain and warmer temperatures after the cold winter cause the first signs of subtle, light pastel colors of spring to begin to grow, inspiring this painting.

[SOLD] ©Rachel Brask, Rainy Moment 09 (Deep Forest Rain). Oil on canvas, 40″x30″

[SOLD] ©Rachel Brask, Rainy Moment 11 (Misty Morning Mountain Rain). Oil on canvas, 40″x30″.