We recently connected with Rachel Rickert and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Rachel thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

At the end of 2021, after 10 years of living in New York, I left. I first moved to New York when I was 21, right out of college, and it is where I started and built my career. It was hard to admit that I did not want to live there anymore. I felt, as an artist, I had to be there. Friends, peers, and mentors told me I had to be there, that I couldn’t leave. But I needed to see what else was out there, I needed physical and mental distance from the “art world” of it all. I needed an adventure, so I left.

Another risk I took, part of leaving, was to forgo having a studio while my husband and I spent the year traveling, working remotely, spending one week or a month or two in various places. Instead, I picked up a French easel, and decided to dive into landscape painting, plein air, for the first time.

What ended up is happening is I made more work this year than ever before, completely surprising myself with each piece along the way. I experienced a whole new side of painting, engaging with the landscape as I traveled across California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, upstate New York, France, and Italy. I had a solo show of this work at Alice Gauvin Gallery in Portland, Maine, in the Fall of 2022, and also showed new landscapes at Auxier Kline, NYC, and with Capsule Shanghai, Shanghai, China. I feel more open minded than ever with my work as I continue to engage with the landscape and see what else is possible with my paintings.

I discovered I am inspired by the land, in painting it directly or existing in a place where I am immersed in it, and have fallen in love with the particular magic of the desert. After a year on the road, I am now very happily settling down in Joshua Tree, CA. A different pace, different coast, and much different environment than New York, and I can’t wait to see what happens with my painting.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a painter. I am inspired by my immediate surroundings and my life as it unfolds. My paintings are rooted in reality, in direct perception or in reflecting on certain visual or emotional experiences. My painting language includes moments of illusionism, flatness, and impressionism, carving with color from within and around. The paint and the image are equally insistent. My imagery varies from self-portraits and portraits of my husband, depicting moments of introspection, the liminal space between consciousness and self-contemplation, to representations of my spaces and the landscape. All my work has a sense of intimacy and access.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I want my work to encourage viewers to see the potential in the everyday. This quote by Robert Henri, in The Art Spirit, encapsulates how I feel about painting, and what my goals are with my work:

“There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual- become clairvoyant. We reach then into reality. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom. It is in the nature of all people to have these experiences; but in our time and under the conditions of our lives, it is only a rare few who are able to continue in the experience and find expression for it.”

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

Experiences are not felt in isolation — everything is fuel for painting. It allows life experience to be removed from a singular event, to something that can be felt or analyzed again through painting. The bad and the good, both can inspire. Pain can lead to painting. Innocuous moments that could be overlooked can be felt as more through painting. I document my life and observations through paint.

My work is personal, but I hope viewers can have their own emotional response to a painting based on their own narratives. Sharing imagery that has the ability to be interpreted individually by a viewer and offer a connection is deeply rewarding. I get to interpret my life, and I hope my work engages viewers in a similar way for their own.

Contact Info:

• Website: rachelrickert.com
• Instagram: @rayrickk

Image Caption:
(1) Rickert painting in Red Rock Canyon, NV.
(2) Sunset Cypress, 2022, oil on panel, 7 x 5 inches. Painted in Corciano, Italy.
(3) Summer Sky, Umbria, oil on panel, 8 x 6 inches, oil on panel. Painted in Corciano, Italy.
(4) Reverie, 2021, oil on canvas, 24 x 26 inches.
(5) Studio Portrait by Julie Florio.
(6) Desert Gathering, 2022, oil on panel, 10 x 8 inches. Painted in Joshua Tree, CA.
(7) Absolution, 2018-202, oil on canvas, 30 x 30 inches. Collection of Xiao Museum of Contemporary Art, Shandong, China.
(8) Wyoming Territory, 2022, oil on panel, 10×10 inches. Painted in Banner, WY.
(9) Warbonnet, 2022, oil on panel 4 x 4 inches. Painted in the Cirque of the Towers, Wind River Range, WY.

Image Credits:
Image (2): Studio Portrait by Julie Florio.