Rachel Howe

Monday, February 23, 2009

Color Studies, 2009, gouache on paper, 24 x 18 inches

Fallen Skeleton, 2009, archival inkjet print, 5 x 6 3/8 inches, edition of 25, $25

Rachel Howe: My conceptual drawings, collages, photographs and paintings on paper link emotional expression to visual representations of the occult, in the most literal sense of the word: the occult as something hidden or concealed or obscured. The aesthetics of the association to the occult—Halloween imagery, ghosts, vampires, witches, monsters—also apply, as they offer an immediate identification with a disjunction between external appearances and internal emotional realities. I seek to access interior, unseen systems based on the power of thought and feeling to alter physical reality (spells, psychokinesis, or psychic upheaval), and relate these to the process of making visual art.