The canvas looks like it’s covered in constellations, or mold. To achieve this patterning, Rachael Anderson (ART ’22) bathed the canvas in oil paint floating on water. The canvas is big, approximately 130’’ by 96’’, and I struggle to imagine her lifting it and laying it onto the water. “It’s light,” she insists, “like a kite.”
The tender care of bathing a painting is similar to the care Rachael shows to the subjects of her work. “I’m fascinated by these things that are of the ground, that are so beautiful. My work is about the overlooked.”
She shows me a semi-abstract painting of ivy. It brims with life, but also feels chaotic, as though the plants are competing for space. The painting was made in her driveway, where she observed the foliage that had situated itself outside her neighbor’s house. She tells me, “This was about everything all together. Different, yet not separate.” Within this community of plants there is violence, too. “These are Norway maples that are invasive to the area. They’re taking over, but are mixed with the native ivy. Plus,” she adds, “green is the most toxic paint you can buy. It’s made with chlorine and copper.”
Most of Rachael’s work depicts the natural world, though by her telling, everything is the natural world. She painted a tire to show that what is industrial is not separate from what is natural. “Rubber comes from a plant but has been processed into this thing. And we can think of plastic as really processed, violated chemicals that come from plants. The oneness is important to me.”
Tangle and Winter Branches, Rachael Anderson
Rachael is taller than I expected. She wears a swirling gray wool cape and practical black running shoes. Her tone shifts between curious, incredulous young person and still, solemn prophet. She grew up on a farm in Ohio, where her parents were rewilding the land that they lived on. She has fond memories of growing flowers and arranging them into bouquets to be sold. This relationship to land is at the core of her work. When I ask about her spiritual background, she tells me, “Earthiness is my language.”
Throughout our conversation, language often fails. Rachael repeatedly breaks into laughter mid-sentence. Sometimes it’s soft and a bit sheepish, other times it’s alive with delight. She’s surrendered to the absurdity and wonder of making art, and to the impossibility of ever really putting what her work is about into words. “The problem with art is that it’s about being misunderstood.” She bursts into laughter again. “You either make really didactic art that’s highly legible, or you’re true to your own vision. It’s impossible to express yourself. You try, and it’s always a failure.” Yet, despite the impossibility, she tries again. “That’s the artist’s task.” We keep talking.
Presence, maybe, is a way of understanding that doesn’t require words. Rachael views painting from life as a “philosophy of being there with these things, and recognizing them. Or at least recognizing their inscription on my body.” She’s currently painting chicken parts—a broken eggshell, a spinal bone, other bones I cannot identify, all arranged on a piece of foam in her studio. “I’m interested in how the way they look is a kind of language, and in how the way our bodies are structured is a kind of language. It’s morbid, but life is pretty morbid.”
When I ask about the difference between painting and photography (Rachael does both, as well as sculpture), she tells me that painting is closer to the real thing because it expresses time and space and the artist’s inner world in a way that photography cannot. She pauses, thinking. “Painting is about presence; photography is about memory.”
Rachael’s work feels grounded in the earth––in processes of decay and decomposition, in the materiality of mold and mulch and plant matter—and, simultaneously, otherworldly. In one painting, twisted branches emerge from layers of pink and orange mist. It feels ephemeral and ethereal, almost like a dream. Next to the canvas sits the branch itself, propped up in the corner and large enough to be a tree in its own right. “That’s where mediation comes in,” she tells me. She gestures at the canvas. “That’s not the tree. That’s my imagined tree, even though I’ve looked at something directly. That’s where my inner world comes in. However true to the subject I try to be, it’s filtered through my body. I’m at once communicating my experience of the object and the object itself. It’s about me communing with these other things.”
Moon Tire, Rachael Anderson
I must admit that I have some stake in our conversation. I’m drawn to the natural world, and to art, and to art that depicts the natural world. I want to believe art has a place in counteracting the climate crisis, that this kind of work has purpose. I ask Rachael about this. She points back to the painting of a tire, the surface of which is covered in veiny purple patterning. “I thought, how do I compromise the automobile industry in an image? Make it have varicose veins. Make it look like it’s ephemeral. But I don’t know yet how art can help… I have an inkling that being there with the stuff that’s in trouble could at least inspire someone else to care about it, too. If I care enough, maybe that care will be expressed to somebody like you, or to somebody else. But I don’t want to be so delusional about it. I want to be very grounded. That’s why I paint things on the ground.”
She thinks more. “Sometimes I mention the beauty of the natural world, and ‘natural’ is in quotes, because everything is natural. But there are certain ecologies that are in danger. Like us. And everything else. Perhaps beauty could play a role in making people care, but maybe the beauty has to be dangerous beauty. I think about apples being heavily sprayed in pesticides. They’re toxic, basically, but they’re so beautiful.”
You can find more of Rachael’s work on Instagram: @rachaelcanderson.
A detail of Compost, Rachael Anderson
The canvas looks like it’s covered in constellations, or mold. To achieve this patterning, Rachael Anderson (ART ’22) bathed the canvas in oil paint floating on water. The canvas is big, approximately 130’’ by 96’’, and I struggle to imagine her lifting it and laying it onto the water. “It’s light,” she insists, “like a kite.”
The tender care of bathing a painting is similar to the care Rachael shows to the subjects of her work. “I’m fascinated by these things that are of the ground, that are so beautiful. My work is about the overlooked.”
She shows me a semi-abstract painting of ivy. It brims with life, but also feels chaotic, as though the plants are competing for space. The painting was made in her driveway, where she observed the foliage that had situated itself outside her neighbor’s house. She tells me, “This was about everything all together. Different, yet not separate.” Within this community of plants there is violence, too. “These are Norway maples that are invasive to the area. They’re taking over, but are mixed with the native ivy. Plus,” she adds, “green is the most toxic paint you can buy. It’s made with chlorine and copper.”
Most of Rachael’s work depicts the natural world, though by her telling, everything is the natural world. She painted a tire to show that what is industrial is not separate from what is natural. “Rubber comes from a plant but has been processed into this thing. And we can think of plastic as really processed, violated chemicals that come from plants. The oneness is important to me.”
Tangle and Winter Branches, Rachael Anderson
Rachael is taller than I expected. She wears a swirling gray wool cape and practical black running shoes. Her tone shifts between curious, incredulous young person and still, solemn prophet. She grew up on a farm in Ohio, where her parents were rewilding the land that they lived on. She has fond memories of growing flowers and arranging them into bouquets to be sold. This relationship to land is at the core of her work. When I ask about her spiritual background, she tells me, “Earthiness is my language.”
Throughout our conversation, language often fails. Rachael repeatedly breaks into laughter mid-sentence. Sometimes it’s soft and a bit sheepish, other times it’s alive with delight. She’s surrendered to the absurdity and wonder of making art, and to the impossibility of ever really putting what her work is about into words. “The problem with art is that it’s about being misunderstood.” She bursts into laughter again. “You either make really didactic art that’s highly legible, or you’re true to your own vision. It’s impossible to express yourself. You try, and it’s always a failure.” Yet, despite the impossibility, she tries again. “That’s the artist’s task.” We keep talking.
Presence, maybe, is a way of understanding that doesn’t require words. Rachael views painting from life as a “philosophy of being there with these things, and recognizing them. Or at least recognizing their inscription on my body.” She’s currently painting chicken parts—a broken eggshell, a spinal bone, other bones I cannot identify, all arranged on a piece of foam in her studio. “I’m interested in how the way they look is a kind of language, and in how the way our bodies are structured is a kind of language. It’s morbid, but life is pretty morbid.”
When I ask about the difference between painting and photography (Rachael does both, as well as sculpture), she tells me that painting is closer to the real thing because it expresses time and space and the artist’s inner world in a way that photography cannot. She pauses, thinking. “Painting is about presence; photography is about memory.”
Rachael’s work feels grounded in the earth––in processes of decay and decomposition, in the materiality of mold and mulch and plant matter—and, simultaneously, otherworldly. In one painting, twisted branches emerge from layers of pink and orange mist. It feels ephemeral and ethereal, almost like a dream. Next to the canvas sits the branch itself, propped up in the corner and large enough to be a tree in its own right. “That’s where mediation comes in,” she tells me. She gestures at the canvas. “That’s not the tree. That’s my imagined tree, even though I’ve looked at something directly. That’s where my inner world comes in. However true to the subject I try to be, it’s filtered through my body. I’m at once communicating my experience of the object and the object itself. It’s about me communing with these other things.”
Moon Tire, Rachael Anderson
I must admit that I have some stake in our conversation. I’m drawn to the natural world, and to art, and to art that depicts the natural world. I want to believe art has a place in counteracting the climate crisis, that this kind of work has purpose. I ask Rachael about this. She points back to the painting of a tire, the surface of which is covered in veiny purple patterning. “I thought, how do I compromise the automobile industry in an image? Make it have varicose veins. Make it look like it’s ephemeral. But I don’t know yet how art can help… I have an inkling that being there with the stuff that’s in trouble could at least inspire someone else to care about it, too. If I care enough, maybe that care will be expressed to somebody like you, or to somebody else. But I don’t want to be so delusional about it. I want to be very grounded. That’s why I paint things on the ground.”
She thinks more. “Sometimes I mention the beauty of the natural world, and ‘natural’ is in quotes, because everything is natural. But there are certain ecologies that are in danger. Like us. And everything else. Perhaps beauty could play a role in making people care, but maybe the beauty has to be dangerous beauty. I think about apples being heavily sprayed in pesticides. They’re toxic, basically, but they’re so beautiful.”
You can find more of Rachael’s work on Instagram: @rachaelcanderson.
A detail of Compost, Rachael Anderson
