about the artist

Rachael Elwell's work explores her interest in repetitive painting and drawing processes as an obsessive and ritualistic activity. What starts as an intrigue into the surrounding constraints and boarders of the gridded surface,  becomes a transgression of rules by hand,  that forms as random, chaotic and lucid artworks. With this running central to her practice, Rachael often begins by placing intuitive brush marks, colours and hand drawn lines together inside large geometric boundaries, to set off the composition of each art work. 

In aspects of Rachael’s work,  intricate forms appear to be uniform, or at least upon first glance, as the intention is to copy the same mark repeatedly. This mimics her visual research into the parts of the natural world that intrigues her - cycles, time measurements, tiny formations on natural plants and symmetries found in nature. 
Through her systems, each mark differs slightly from the previous, and in turn the activity of viewing becomes 'long form' ;  it resembles the experiential mark making that can come times takes weeks to produce a small drawing. 

The more the viewer looks, then further complexity in the composition is unveiled through the mechanics of the eye and the psyche of the individual.
The scale of these drawings are human; they are within the measure of the Artists' hand movement, and the density of simple actions amass to something that leads the eye. It again touches upon how the experience of looking is a manifestation of the self.
The act of looking is what Artist and writer Clement Greenberg termed as a primary experience, the viewer is actively experiencing the work and producing meaning by what is observed.

 In Rachael’s latest work, her source of inspiration has turned to her local landscape in the Calder Valley, albeit through abstract terms. She is interested in cyclical colour palettes present at different points over the year, especially in the sky,   and natural forms which appear to have geometric form. The marrying of these two elements give reference to rich and varied representations of her environment. 

 For Rachael , it is within this slow long exposure that the materials and mechanics of painting and drawing come to the fore: paper, pencil, ink, paint and canvas. Time and space presents the humanness of the materials, this is not pictorial or merely abstract, its duration and what duration does here is imbue this sense of infinity- an ever changing arrangement of forms that are far from whole in the moment of production.