An analysis by Artist & Ceramics Lecturer, Dr. Terry Davies
Rachel was born in Cardiff, however her early years were spent in Gloucestershire after her parents moved there. She inherited an artistic legacy from her family as her father is a figurative and landscape painter, so too from her grandmother whose home is filled with dozens of her own artworks. Other relatives also paint, so it is no wonder that Rachel felt compelled from an early age to continue this tradition - essentially the die was cast for a career in the arts.
In 2013 she attended Aberystwyth University and gained a First-Class degree in Fine Art and English Literature. However, the need to create was becoming such a driving force that she then undertook a Masters in Painting and graduated in 2018 with a Distinction. Since 2016 Rachel has participated annually in group exhibitions at The Mid Wales Arts Centre Caersws, Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Blossom Gallery Aberystwyth, Cardigan Bay Gallery, MOMA Machynlleth, Twenty Twenty Gallery Ludlow and St Mary Woolnoth London.
Rachel describes her initial pre-college work as “competent everyday images”. All this changed when her tutor and mentor, June Forster, opened the door to abstraction which proved cathartic for both Rachel and her work. Armed with this new creative paradigm she began considering a re-engagement with her beloved marine environment as a source for future paintings. Rachel’s profound love of the sea had begun during childhood holidays at her grandmother’s home in Cornwall. Daily swims, or more importantly, immersion in the sea, she found exhilarating and refreshing. As Rachel says, “this daily ritual seemed to cleanse body and soul”. All this indicates that her infatuation with the sea has an element of spiritual fulfilment about it. The sea’s Siren call became louder, compelling Rachel to use it as her subject matter; especially as at the time she lived in Borth, a village literally built on a beachside strand. The inspirational landscape, coastal waters and rivers of north Ceredigion have become fertile grounds for her abstract paintings. Beach-scapes, cliff and rock formations surrounding small bays and inlets provide an embracing and comforting presence, as if they were part of a natural font where her “baptismal” rituals take place. These feelings are compounded by memories of a childhood trip to Staffa in Scotland where Rachel viewed its incredible geological features that made an indelible mark on her.
As Rachel says “I primarily paint in response to memories and photographs of swimming in the sea, walking the hills and mountains and biking in the West Wales. My paintings not only capture some of the shapes, light and colour of the surrounding countryside but also the mood and energy of recollected memories of being immersed in the landscape, especially the sea.I have painted, walked and swum around Borth and Aberystwyth for the last 10 years. I have fallen in love with deep cold dives into dark water whilst storm clouds roll across the sky, frothy dips in winter waves, the calm of floating on the sea’s surface on a still day and from quiet reflective moments looking out over the fields and to the hills from my studio window”.
Rachel’s swims along the coastline opened new vistas which became the focus of her current work. For her, the world of nature is interconnected with her internal contemplative space. One primordial response during her underwater explorations is that the sea is a living thing whose tidal movements are its constant heartbeat. Relocating to live at Tanybwlch, immediately south of Aberystwyth, has extended her research area which currently covers the littoral from Borth south to Morfa Bychan.
Rachel utilises underwater photography as a means by which to create a portfolio of “sketches”. Abstractions of these create her distinctive images as often sea water is rarely crystal clear. We may surmise that her paintings are a sea creature’s view of the rock shelves, seabed and boulder strewn shorelines. This is a world seldom viewed by those of us on coastal cliff top walks, or along the rock shelves at low water. Rachel’s take is personal and individual as she makes manifest her aquatic scenarios. During her swimming and diving activities her mind considers that this underwater world is not only beautiful and exotic with its multifarious marine denizens and geological features, but under the hypnotic influences
of her immersions it conjures up notions of lost cities such as Atlantis and other mythological long submerged human habitations. These thoughts are magnified and enhanced in this part of Cardigan Bay by the legend of Cantre’r Gwaelod, a fabled drowned city that was purportedly situated on land that lay offshore between Aberystwyth and Aberdyfi.
Fired by these notions we glimpse in her underwater inspired works different coloured and shaped elements amongst the rocks and stones that could be eroded pieces of architectural masonry. Possibly imagined from Cantre’r Gwaelod’s ancient buildings, or from the long- disappeared Capel Cynfelyn near Wallog. Maybe they could even be remnants of St Mary’s church recorded as having been washed away during a hurricane in Tudor times. The only clue to the latter’s possible location is an underwater mound marked as Tol Faer (Mary’s Mound) in the ordinance survey map of 1841. The coastal strip between Ynyslas and Clarach is redolent with tales of ghosts and spirits. According to local legend the fabled poet Taliesin was found in a gored (fish trap) at Wallog. At Borth there is the ghost of the White Lady who lives in a cave near Trwyn Pellaf; older still is the female apparition that lived in a cave, now vanished, under Craig Y Delyn (Harp Rock). All this adds a certain frisson to Rachel’s creations.
Swimming these waters gives Rachel room to play with an increasing array of ideas from which she develops her own compositions and colour palette. Often included are brightly coloured tangles of floating seaweed or a glimpse through the water at a sunlit cliff top. The works contain mysterious, thought provoking and evocative shapes where we seem to be with the artist, via her paintings, on an enthralling journey. Colours induce feelings like those one experiences by viewing stained glass windows. The more one looks at Rachel’s abstracted oceanic worlds of varying blue hues, the more we can read and immerse ourselves in her mesmeric labyrinthine water worlds.She paints instinctively with no forward planning, the modus operandi for her creative expression is free and uninhibited like a dive into her beloved sea realms. Adam Lindsay Gordon’s poem The Swimmer, springs to mind when viewing Rachel’s work, which contains these lines:
I would that with sleepy, soft embraces
The sea would fold me-would find me rest
In luminous shades of her secret places,
In depths where her marvels are manifest.
Inland waterways, primarily freshwater rivers and small streams of her Welsh locus that flow to and surrender themselves to the coastal seas embrace have, according to Rachel, a different ambiance as they are cooler and have a softer feel. This is a slightly different set of sensory experiences than those of the sea, but the element of baptism and renewal are the same. Aerial maps of the coast and interiors are reference points when dealing with local topographies as these are spiced with elements, such as ancient prehistoric sites and the folklore attached to them. None more so than the Iron Age Hill fort of Pen Dinas just across the meadow from her studio. Rachel considers and ponders how long-ago peoples viewed the landscape that is now her artistic domain. Her painterly engagement with the terrain continually reflects its enchanting and mystic quality. In her capable hands any future artworks dealing with the coastal landscape, its freshwater features as well as her ‘sea’ paintings, are an exciting prospect to look forward to.
Most of her recent artworks are primarily centred on coastal subject matters. Whilst exploring her wellsprings not only does she use photographic aids, but she stores myriad snapshots in her mind that often shape-shift beneficially by the time she commences her paintings. I believe Rachel’s work supports Ellen Dissanyaki’s notion that ‘arts existence owes more to bio behavioural practices to do with love and connectedness than any elitist imposts’. Some of her ideas come from the remembered scenery of Cornwall and Scotland, but in the last decade, it is north Cardiganshire that has heightened her emotional responses indicating a deep and evolving sense of place. It is no surprise that the late Peter Lanyon is a favoured artist with his regionalist and romantic take on his beloved Cornwall. There are similarities between these two painters as Lanyon developed a looser and more open type of painting, and to enhance this he learnt to fly gliders so that he could gain an aerial perspective. Rachel has studied aerial maps and charts to gain an additional viewpoint of the landscape.
The patchwork quilts of her creations are like coded messages to the viewers senses eliciting deep emotional thoughts and visceral attachments. Such is her dedication to her painting she currently holds down three jobs to enable her art practice to flourish. Rachel relentlessly immerses herself in the inspirational land and seascapes of her region which she instinctively and adroitly converts into sumptuous artworks. Her distinct visual iconography embracing north Cardiganshire’s rivers, lakes, seas and coastal vistas is full of harmonious lyricism. With her innate and obvious talent this young artist has a bright future and is making a notable contribution to contemporary Welsh landscape painting.
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