Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Rachael Hunter. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Rachael thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?

I realized I was on the wrong career path in my senior year of college. I had just started taking an advanced painting class where we were given 24/7 access to a studio space. It was the first time that I had a place of my own, specifically for the sole purpose of being creative. At that time, I was still working for a marketing agency, and I was pursuing a degree in marketing. I had been working there for four years, balancing work and school, and it was starting to really wear me down. Painting was how I was able to unwind and channel my anxious energy into something besides drinking and partying. The final straw was when I had to leave school for a week to oversee a traveling tradeshow for one of our clients. I wasn’t sleeping; my stress was at an all-time high. I was making good money, but I felt like I was just doing a bad job at work and school. One night in South Dakota, I just stayed awake in my hotel room and pictured the rest of my life if I kept going down this path. I wanted so desperately to be wealthy enough to provide for my parents and have financial stability, which I didn’t grow up with. When I tried to see a future for myself like that, it was just nothingness.

I quit working for the company after that trip, and I decided to get a part-time job doing ticketing at a planetarium and to just focus on my painting class. It felt like this was my only chance to be an artist, and I had to take it. I was at UW-Madison on a scholarship, and every day that went by was a free day painting that had to be taken advantage of. Realizing that there was another way besides the path I had chosen for myself years ago was so liberating, and I felt like I needed to paint every day or I would drop dead. I started throwing art shows with some other local artists and friends from class. Making art with them and presenting it as a group made me feel understood.

So no, I never think about what it would be like to have another career because I already tried it and I felt like a shell of a person. Being an artist is such a weird thing because there isn’t really one path to take or one way to measure success, but I feel super fulfilled. Even when I am feeling really low, I have a way to try and understand the feeling and put it into something I can look at instead of pushing it down and ignoring it like I used to. I don’t know if happy is the word, but I just feel like I’m on the right path, even if I don’t know where it leads.

Rachael, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a painter living and working in Madison, Wisconsin. I share a painting studio with two of my friends, Audrey Rankin and Maile Lloyd, at Roundhouse Studios. My paintings are vibrant, warped versions of reality. I prefer to paint in a variety of styles, changing based on what I’m trying to convey. Sometimes I use a humanoid form and abstract it to represent a feeling I can’t express with words. Other times, I create scenes from my life through a lens that makes them unreal but more honest. The thing that I love most about painting is the actual act of moulding paint. The process of blending, smearing, and scraping bright pigments together is as invigorating as it can be relaxing. Experimenting with new surfaces to paint on also thrills me. I have been painting on blob-shaped wood panels and bedsheets stretched over canvas frames, but recently I have been branching into other fabrics like felt and satin.

Collaboration and brainstorming with the women I share my studio with makes me feel like I’m connected to a higher force of feminine artistic expression. Being surrounded by work they do also inspires me every day. Seeing how their styles differ from mine and reflect their personalities as they develop as artists and women is such an incredible thing to witness. However, sometimes painting is a very personal activity for me, and it brings up feelings I would rather confront alone. A lot of my work is about the themes of relationships and intimacy, and how I struggle to understand them in a world pushing us deeper into isolation.

A good example of this is a painting I completed this year called “Playing Chicken”. Initially, the painting started as an oversized study of four abstract forms, but as it developed, I turned it into a family portrait, with each of the humanoid subjects representing a member of my family, including myself. It’s a very uncomfortable and disturbing painting to look at when you view it as a family portrait because their bodies are mangled up with each other, and none of them seem happy to be in the positions they are in. This painting was a struggle to make because while I was considering how I wanted to craft their limbs and facial expressions, I was thinking about my family and how we interact with each other, as well as how our family unit had been impacted by things like religion, financial struggles, and mental illness. Although this painting was hurtful to make at times, it was more cathartic than anything because I was able to grapple with these complex themes in a way that just makes sense to me. Now I can look at it and feel all the pain and confusion I felt while making it, but now there is a physical form to this hyper-specific emotion I feel when thinking about family and what they mean to me.

I think what sets me apart from others is that my paintings are not really made with the intent to be enjoyed by others. The main thing I care about while making a painting is if it’s as honest as I can possibly be. Which means most of the time, there are eerie and uncanny undertones or more jarring and disturbing overtones. I find that the more exposed I feel when presenting a painting, the more successful it is. Although most of my paintings are specifically about my own interactions and relationships, I hope they are potential points of connection I can make with others who may feel the same way.

Many times during the day, I feel a sense of panic wash over me because it feels like we are all in a house fire, deciding to ignore it together. The planet is dying because of a handful of selfish devil people, genocide is widely accepted and livestreamed, and people are kidnapped from the street just based on the color of their skin or the language they speak. I am so disillusioned with the concept of a shared reality because now we live in a world where a person’s perception of the world can be manufactured by an algorithm with only the goal of profit. With AI now becoming so advanced, not only is what you are seeing filtered, but it could also be entirely fake. This feeling of reality unraveling is constantly on my mind and potent in my paintings.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Interact with us, genuinely. Find art that you are attracted to and try to understand why. If you have the opportunity to dive deeper, always do it. Why do you like the things you like? Why do you hate the things you hate? Are you the one forming these opinions, or do your preferences come from somewhere else? By staying engaged with art and opening yourself up to new things, you grow as a person and better understand other people.

This doesn’t mean the only way to support the arts is by buying art. You can invest in art with your time, attention, and advocacy. Sometimes, all a person needs to feel encouraged is interest shown by one person. If you want to take it a step further, find out who your representative is and let them know you want them to choose to support the arts. A thriving arts ecosystem requires an invested audience; again, this doesn’t necessarily mean just money. Even though money is great, and if you have money for God’s sake, buy local art from a real human instead of a lifeless, tacky AI print from Hobby Lobby.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

I think it might be hard for people to understand why I needed to quit pursuing a financially stable career to make my art more authentic. It might seem like an extreme change to make so suddenly, when I had already sunk years of my life into becoming a marketer and business professional. Was it really necessary to abandon this path to pursue a life in the arts? The answer is yes, 100%, there is no way I could have personally made the art I needed to make while working as an advertiser and marketer.

This became clear when I was in a marketing class, doodling in my sketchbook and listening to a guest speaker. He worked for a mobile gambling app and spent the class period congratulating himself for being such a smart and strategic marketer. He shared a story about a time his company ran into problems because many states had anti-gambling laws. Instead of accepting that, he shared with us about how the company lobbied politicians to get laws changed. To him, undermining democracy by paying off politicians was just another strategy to make profits. I was horrified, and even though the company I worked for at the time had never participated in something like that, the idea that this was to be accepted as normal made me sick.

There was no way I would be able to express myself and what I thought of the world around me if I spent 40 hours a week just trying to sell more shit to people that don’t need it. I will admit, sometimes it’s hard to make finances work and pay for my life as an artist without compromising my morals. However, being a student for life and art being the foundation of my life is the most fulfilling path for me, personally. Not at all saying that this is the way for everyone, but I encourage everyone to evaluate their relationship with money and how they make it, and if it feels wrong, there really is always another way.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Rachaelkayhunter.com
• Instagram: Rachael._.Paints

Image Credits

I took all these photos except for the one of the father and son looking at my painting, the one of me with two friends in the studio, and my headshot; they were all taken by Maile Lloyd.