Artist statement
Rachael creates beautiful, powerful, semi abstract, mixed media paintings inspired by the natural environment. Avenda, known for her unusual portraits of strong women, has been exploring the salty end of the Teign. Together they continue to lead the Unearthing Templer Way project, a collaboration of artists and poets.
Extended Bio
Rachael makes paintings and drawings as an emotional and visual response to the natural world. Her work is mixed media, semi abstract and focused on surface, texture and colour.
She sees her paintings as an environment allowing imaginative connections and the ability for people to make their own personal interpretations.
She is interested in the link between physical form, story telling and change. Rachael wants the viewer to experience, for example, that psychological state of mind created at the moment between wakefulness and dreaming, that threshold liminal space where the alchemy can occur. She paints and draws because she believes that the arts can communicate qualities and emotions that words alone cannot and wants to share this.
Rachael looks at landscapes, seascapes and the ever changing weather. The intimate landscape beneath her feet is just as engrossing as the grander view, and the interplay between the two, the near and the far, just as stimulating.The relationships between the materials used and image created is important. One is responsible for the other, it is symbiotic. The resultant conversation is where the true dialogue can happen. This is the entry point, the place where the liminal experience is possible.
“Art is really something very difficult. It is difficult to make, and it is sometimes difficult for the viewer to understand….A part of it should always include having to scratch your head…..”
Anselm Kiefer
British artist Rachael Bennett was born in 1956 and attended Winchester School of Art and completed her first degree at Liverpool University. She then ran a successful textile design practice in London for many years selling internationally.
She has lived in the coastal port of Teignmouth, Devon for 35 years, which has been a major influence on her work as an expressionistic, mixed media artist interested in liminal spaces within the natural world.
Avenda: My current exploration of strong faces shows I am getting a bit fed up with the word beautiful. It takes everything away and gives us nothing. When we award status beauty we deny strength and intelligence. If status beauty is not awarded, what then? In The Salon de Reussée, the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo, reworked, new work found within discards, actively mining the thrown away to discover a dialogue for our joint future. The old faces stare out from their canvas world asking past generations what they were thinking when they mined our earth for profit and gain … again and again. The same faces look forward with raised eyebrows, questions for those growing into our future, and asking how we can use art to highlight and change the course of commercialism … leading us to revel in the re-found, the reused, the rediscovered, finding value in the thrown away. Faces keep appearing and asking their recycling questions of me.
Group Members
Avenda Burnell Walsh,
[email protected], https://avenda.uk https://rebelwithoutherdrawers
Rachael Bennett
