Rachel McDonnell
Painter
Biography
Rachel McDonnell is an artist. Her practice is generally painting based, though it has taken and will continue to take various other forms, including mixed media, sculpture and web projects. She has had many exhibitions, both solo and group, including at: James Wray & Co., Belfast; The Cavehill Gallery, Belfast; Bell Gallery, Belfast; The Mill Gallery, Lyme Regis; No. 54 Shepherd Market, London; The Menier Gallery, London; Walled Garden Gallery, Glenarm; The RWA, Bristol; The Royal Academy; Ludlow Open, Ludlow; Centrespace, Bristol; National Open Art Competition; Cupola Gallery, Sheffield, as well participating regularly in Stroud Valley Arts’ open studios programme.
Rachel studied for her Foundation Course in Fine Art at City and Guilds art school, before going on to study Politics, Philosophy and Economics at St. Anne’s College, Oxford, where she won a scholarship. The ideas encountered during this time continue to inform her work, specifically in terms of the links between politics, philosophy and art.
She lives near Stroud with Ray and their two young daughters, who account for a small professional hiatus in the last few years.
Rachel McDonnell is a painter whose preoccupations include light, and our experiences of it, paying homage to the minutiae/neglected things in life through the medium of painting, optical trickery and pattern. Beyond that she had interests in philosophy and politics, feminism and the environment, amongst other things, all of which feed into her work. She tries to amalgamate thoughts and ideas about art and the world into something which draws the viewer in, and might lead them both to appreciate the work as an object in itself, and also to think about both the work and its subject.