Rachael O'Shaughnessy
Artist based in Maine
ABOUT
Rachael O'Shaughnessy is perhaps best known for witnessing this last decade of consecutive sunrises over the ocean, and translating them into palpable atmospheric paintings.O'Shaughnessy has a passion for the coastline as it meets the timeless and sublime. With the weather and emotive color on her brush, she explores the poetry of their movement. Rachael O'Shaughnessy balances her museum work into her own visceral experience of nature. Bob Keyes of The Portland Press Herald has referred to her as the“ Sea Dancer”, and sublime works by J.M. W. Turner, Albert Pinkham Ryder, and Mark Rothko cue in her passion for color and light as they meet the New England coastline. Recent bodies of work carry O'Shaughnessy through investigations in human scale, in which she creates both miniature black and white drawings that aim toward enormity, and large scaled colored works that echo the intimate. O'Shaughnessy received a BFA with honors in painting from Maine College of Art, working with Lois Dodd, Wolf Kahn, and Johnnie Ross, in addition to independent studies in Europe. O'Shaughnessy's numerous residencies include Vermont Studio Center, Hewnoaks Residency, Pace House, Baie St. Marie in Nova Scotia, and Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. Her work with museums includes teaching for The Currier Museum of Art, The Farnsworth Museum, and several Historic New England Museums. Her work is shown nationally, and internationally, in both public and private collections.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Lifting The Ocean Light.
Ten years ago a traumatic car accident galvanized a new strength in me, and when I witnessed a profound sunrise, it altered the path of my work, and my life. I have been witnessing and absorbing each consecutive sunrise over the ocean for 365 days a year, in all weather. As witness to thousands of rises in all seasons and moods, my brushes unite with the shifting sunlight, colored atmosphere, and waters that move me. I merge paint, presence, and purpose; gathering the experience on site, then working in my studio from feeling and memory. Every morning, I wake before dawn to find the universal in atmospheric light and extend it to others. A sunrise, and the ocean's presence is impossible to capture, so I forgo the timely for the timeless, and seek nature's essential essence. A tiny vessel in the vastness. I'm here to move others in rendering nature as felt, walked through, breathed in, and condensed.
Website: https://rachaeleastman.com/home.html
Instagram: @rachael.oshaughnessy