Rachel Pruzan

About My Work:
Using alcohol ink, oil paint, cold wax, and fire, I create abstract paintings and dreamy landscapes that communicate and evoke emotion. Many works incorporate chiaroscuro, using the quality, color, and direction of light to create mood, and leave emotional imprints on viewers.

My art is born from intuition and curiosity, and gives voice to subconscious emotions that elude identification. I explore growth, transformation, and dualities of the human condition through my work.

Elements of the Earth’s topography, geology, and other aspects of the natural world are also evident in my paintings. There is often a sense of solitude.

My work is filled with layers of texture and movement. This creates depth, and the artistic equivalent of “palimpsest”— a word describing something that’s altered, but still bears traces of its original form.

I enjoy working with media that can be reworked, reactivated, and moved over and over again. Lines, curves, and colors evolve as I work, and provide a blueprint that guides me to the finished piece. My process is a beautiful collaboration between medium and artist, and a dialogue between randomness and control.

I am primal, messy, and gestural when I paint, and I frequently eschew brushes for my bare hands.

About Me:
I’m wildly curious, constantly exploring, experimenting, and discovering techniques and themes in my art. I love to work without restraint, and I’m not afraid to fail.

I’m interested in understanding art within its cultural context, and it’s relationship with other disciplines. I will forever be amazed by—and reverential to—the relationship between art and viewer.