Rachel DeBoard is a painter originally from Kailua, HI. Her work draws on psychological portraiture, socially awkward encounters, existentialism, and the creaturely.
“My work is influenced by process and my surroundings. I make abstracted figures and animals on canvas and linen, using a variety of paint, binders, and drawing tools.”
“Animals are often instigators of chaos and simultaneously display creaturely triumph.”
DeBoard’s current work explores liminal transitions, using secluded gardens and the wilderness as polarizing forces. She contrasts the planned with the uncanny, reflecting on how repetition and habit are ripped open by an interruption or trauma.
She uses monastic gardens and nature as a visual analogy; the English garden has always represented man’s struggle to balance control and nature.
“They move amicably between wild or unknown spaces and societal frameworks, making them perfect guides through comfortless change or turmoil.”
DeBoard lives in Highland Park, MI, but she has a studio and works at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit. There she runs the Imaging Center Risograph program.
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