R O N  L A W S O N

Rachel was born in Dumfries, Scotland in 1976, and began her career as a painter in 1996 and has since exhibited extensively. She ran Northern Eye Gallery in Fife between 2002 and 2006, has been featured in numerous magazines and editorials and has work held in The Town Collection, Huntly; ConocoPhillips, Rubislaw House, Aberdeen and in private collections in the UK and the United States and now splits her time between her off-grid Croft in Aberdeenshire, and Dundee where she is currently studying Fine Art at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design.

​

Rachel’s recent accomplishments include a residency at Deveron Projects in Huntly, which culminated in her work being presented as a short film at the Tate Modern, London, as part of the Tate Exchange Program with Cornerstone Arts in May 2018, being invited to speak at a conference in Austria by the Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts at their Global Academy II, examples of transcultural exchange in August 2018, at The Royal Scottish Academy for the Edinburgh Arts Festival in August 2018 as one of a series of talks titled Art, Borders and Migration and for Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums Lunchtime Talks in January 2019. She was also featured on Sky TVs ‘Portrait Artist of the Year’ in 2014.

‘I use painting, printing, poetry, music, video, sound and performance to consider damage and repair, both psychological, cultural and in the natural world. Human waste, environmentalism and holistic and sustainable living are also at the core of my work.

In my landscape paintings, I explore themes of solitude, escape, survival and childhood games of losing oneself in wild and free places and worlds. Focusing on the overlooked areas of the North East of Scotland and its flora, I play with the effects of light and expose its transcendental colours.
I am endlessly fascinated by the shapes and patterns that are created when the straight lines of farmland cut into fluid undulating surfaces, our continual attempts to manage and make order of the chaotic wilderness and the wild beauty that always creeps back in around the edges. I try to depict the terrifying loneliness of remote, abandoned and derelict buildings and natures swift reclamation of our marks on the land.’