Rachel Brask.
Painting Rainy Days.
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detailed info on featured paintings & how to purchase
artist statement
video of process demonstration
artist bio
Featured Oil Paintings
The early morning in the city is a quiet, still, and sacred time. The rain at the earliest spark of daybreak over the city glows with the refraction of the first light glistening on the raindrops as they fall over the quiet hush of a waking city. Walking around at this time carries with it a bittersweetness, saying goodbye to the night that we've known, while saying hello to the hope of a new day and whatever it holds. The rain falling during this time brings a white noise and a hush to the dawning sidewalks and buildings, as we take the first steps in shallow puddles to wherever our journey for the day starts.
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The painting is inspired by the dark blues and high contrast light of walking around Boston around the early morning hours, right at sunrise, when it’s quiet and calm. Imagine all this viewed through the lense of a window when it’s pouring rain, and you get this imagery.
This original oil painting is painted on all outer edges of a 1.5 inch profile canvas, signed by artist Rachel Brask, and is available for purchase. Painting comes with hanging wire affixed to back of canvas. This original hand-painted canvas also contains a uniquely textured surface where some of the "rain drips" dried in place.
How many times do we look to the sky on a gray day and count our blessings? Many take a gray rainy day as an expression of doom, gloom and sadness. How much more often do the gray days coexist with patches of clear blue sky? In this painting, I aim to express the contrast of the beautiful and warm fall foliage colors with the gray storm that appears to be rolling in, or rolling out, depending on how you view the artwork. Over the horizon is a section of blue sky. But if you look even more closely at the top left of the painting, you'll see there's a breakthrough patch of blue sky in the midst of the gray, a little reminder that we can find that breakthrough when we look hard enough for it; or it has a way of finding us when we're least expecting it. All this uses rain and oil paint as the abstraction of time, material and metaphor.
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The painting is inspired by the view of a beautiful autumn day in by a pond, the brilliant fall foliage reflected in the water, while the sky above is hovering between a blue sky day and a gray storm rolling either in or out. Imagine all this viewed through the lense of a window when it’s pouring rain, and you get this imagery.
This original oil painting is painted on all outer edges of a 1.5 inch profile canvas, signed by artist Rachel Brask, and is available for purchase. Painting comes with hanging wire affixed to back of canvas. This original hand-painted canvas also contains a uniquely textured surface where some of the "rain drips" dried in place.
This painting inspired by the view from the porch of the artist’s riverside log cabin, looking out onto the valley. Brask painted several quick studies of the changing colors of the sunset, this being on the earlier end of the sunset, as the sky transitioned from blue to oranges and cool warm tones.
This original oil painting is painted on all outer edges of a 1.5 inch profile gallery-wrap canvas, signed by artist Rachel Brask, and includes accompany Certificate of Authenticity. Painting comes with hanging wire affixed to back of canvas. This original hand-painted canvas also contains a uniquely textured surface where some of the "rain drips" dried in place.
This painting highlights the change of sunset rain from earlier warm hues falling in harmony with the raindrops refracting the cooler tones of a later sunset, before nightfall. Highlighting the oranges, purples, and pink tones, Brask uses oil paints and a process of creating an image in pointillism texture, only to wipe it all away using gravity, brushwork, and time. Like the process of adapting to rainy days, with each droplet, she adapts her original vision for the painting to work in conversation with gently modifying where and how the raindrops roll down the painting's imagined window.
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This painting inspired by the view from the porch of the artists’s riverside log cabin, looking out onto the valley. She painted several quick studies of the changing colors of the sunset, this being on the later end of the sunset just before dark cooler colors descend with nighttime.
This original oil painting is painted on all outer edges of a 1.5 inch profile gallery-wrap canvas, signed by artist Rachel Brask, and includes accompany Certificate of Authenticity. Painting comes with hanging wire affixed to back of canvas. This original hand-painted canvas also contains a uniquely textured surface where some of the "rain drips" dried in place.
A slight departure from Brask's more saturated and colorful rainscapes, this oil painting remains in neutral territory, earth tones of grays and warm browns, expressions of a mountain or desert landscape somewhere in the American west, possibly along the Rocky Mountains. While this landscape might be relatively dry at times, there is a very small river that meanders its way through the valley, where all the rain from this particular storm will eventually flow to. The gray colors of the sky cools down the warm hues of the land, the sky opened up its rain to cool the ground and provide much-needed rain.
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Embrace the sense of calm and exploration in exploring this mountain rocky landscape, following the river path up into the summits after going through the valley. Now imagine viewing this through the rainy window from inside the warmth of a log cabin overlooking this scene on a rainy day.
This original oil painting is painted on all outer edges of a 1.5 inch profile canvas, signed by artist Rachel Brask, and is available for purchase. Painting comes with hanging wire affixed to back of canvas. This original hand-painted canvas also contains a uniquely textured surface where some of the "rain drips" dried in place.
Artist Statement
While many see rainy days as gloomy, I see rain as necessary for new life, pause, renewal, and as respite for mental health. I paint rainy abstracted nature impressions of land, sky, sea, and seasons to show new perspectives on finding tranquility and beauty in dark and stormy times. I see how sheets of pouring raindrops distort scenes beyond, blending colors and shapes together to drip down glass. Colors seem more saturated in rain, and the storms interrupt everything.
In my practice, I create detailed pointillism landscapes on canvas, then I use gravity, stand-oil, and a brush to wipe them out, leaving a flawed and uniquely unpredictable outcome, that I then reshape into something embracing imperfect beauty and calm. I take on the changes that come from working intensely on editing and blending the remaining drips and paint smudges, returning to the canvas every hour or two, over the course of days, to react and adjust to how the paint has shifted.
My art practice focuses on exploring the internal and external revelations and reactions that people have to rain, rain’s connections to indoors and outdoors, and how we find calm and beauty in the storms that are out of our control.
The process in motion
Sometimes you have to see it in order to believe how these rain inspired paintings by Rachel Brask started out, and then to see their transformation arc into how they turn out.
About Rachel Brask
ARTIST BIO
Rachel Brask is a contemporary abstract expressionist painter of rainy days from Rhode Island, USA. Brask's reimagined oil landscapes express the abstracted calm, chaos and contemplation of rainy days. She's exhibited in solo, invitational, and juried shows around New England (USA), in Italy, and with work in private collections in Italy and the UK.
Brask has developed her artwork as artist-in-residence in Cape Cod, Maine, North Carolina, and Toronto, Ontario. She has received several honors, including selection as a Directors’ Pick “Showstopper” at the Paradise City Arts Festival, second place award in exhibition, "Imagine Water,” and previously, as Best in Show for the “Autumn Rain” painting that inspired her current body of work. She has been honored to be selected for the Curatorial Mentorship Program and the Founders Award by Art League Rhode Island, and is an alum of AS220’s Practice/Practice program. Rachel earned a B.A. in art from Houghton College, with concentrations in painting, graphic design & photography.
Rachel creates original oil paintings, commissions, and teaches private art lessons and workshops. Her studio is in East Providence, Rhode Island.