A Swell Conversation with Rachel Garrard
Time Does not Wait, 2024, Courtesy of the artist & KÖNIG GALERIE
Rachel Garrad (b. 1984) lives and works in New York and Mexico. She earned a BFA and MFA at Central Saint Martins, London. Garrard’s multifaceted practice integrates painting, sculpture, sound, installation, and video, articulating a view of reality in which the border between the physical and ephemeral is porous and ever-shifting. Her paintings are composed of natural substances, such as quartz, ash, or rock powder pigment, that she has personally collected, hand-ground, and applied to raw linen canvas through a process of fine layering translucent washes of color. The applied pigment becomes a physical register of place, a palimpsest of past experiences, and a portal to the metaphysical landscape of memory.
Garrard’s work has been featured at the Academy Mansion, NYC (2023); Casa Wabi, Mexico (2022); Hammond Museum, NY (2019); Kraftwerk, Berlin (2017); Pioneer Works, NYC (2016); the National Academy Museum, NYC (2015), Métropole Musée d’Art Moderne, France (2015); Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City (2014), among many others.
I had the pleasure of asking Rachel about her most recent exhibition, how art makes life a more fulfilling process and experience, her favorite thing about creating art, and so much more.
U: Why did you choose to use abstract as a form to display your artistic statement? What about abstract draws you to use this type of medium?
R: I believe non-objective art is not so concerned with the external appearance of things; it looks for an inner essence beyond physical form, and it expresses the interior world of the artist. I spent a long time looking at the principles of proportional relationships. I started using abstract geometry as a framework for my drawings; it is a language that can be used to describe things of an immaterial nature and was recommended by Plato as the clearest model by which to describe the metaphysical realm. The diagrams I am working with don’t belong to the world of forms; they come from the unconscious and inner world, the unmanifest and formless ground that gives birth to form. It is my hope that the abstract forms and subtle tones evoke emotions and sensations within the viewer, who, in response, can access their own inner world.
U: You work across many mediums, including sculpture and performance art. How do you make each medium coexist with the others to reflect your artistic vision and statement?
R: When it comes to making a work, I go through my sketchbook and study the text and diagrams I have been working on; I wait until it becomes clear which direction to take next. The medium and material of the work are not so important to me; the ideas can be translated in a variety of ways through a painting, sculpture, installation, or video; it doesn’t really matter. I usually choose the medium depending on where I will be showing next and what makes sense. I like to use things from nature as the building blocks of the work. In my ephemeral installation, this means actually collecting seed pods, stones, etc., and placing them in specific relationships. In the paintings, I use rock pigments that I have personally collected, hand-ground, and applied to raw linen through a process of fine layering. The sediments on canvas not only create depth and dimensionality, but the rock pigments speak of places and memories.
Aten, 2023, Courtesy of the artist & KÖNIG GALERIE
U: Your recent exhibition, "Time Will Not Wait For Us," presents a unique perspective that beautifully combines the natural world, perception, and imagination. Could you share a specific inspiration or experience that led to this intriguing blend?
R: The paintings explore the field of abstraction from a point of view that intertwines the natural world, perception, and imagination. They are created by layering pigments collected from rocks and minerals directly onto the raw linen canvas until abstract universes emerge. The surface of the works acts as topographies, each application of pigment revealing a journey through physical and metaphysical realms. The use of natural materials seeks to link the terrestrial with inner landscapes, while the geometry, shapes, and colors of the paintings evoke dreamlike spaces, impossible architectures, and indecipherable symbols and function as a point of intersection of the visible and the invisible.
The exhibition's theme is informed by the current fractiousness of global politics and the challenges facing the natural world. The works contrast this with the potential I see in the cosmic structure as a reliable system that holds everything together. In a time of uncertainty and divisiveness, I believe in anchoring my work in the unchanging principles that govern the universe.
U: How does art make life a more fulfilling process and experience?
R: Perhaps the aim of an artist’s life, like everyone’s, is to explore who they are in a broader, more metaphysical sense. An artist is able to translate their experiences and visions into a work that can have a more abstract interpretation than the written word. For me it is a way to express and identify with a larger form of myself.
Parallel Worlds, 2021, steel, Courtesy of the artist & KÖNIG GALERIE
U: Could you share how you bring out abstraction through the natural world and vividly portray imagination and perception in your art?
R: The paintings reveal inner structures of the external world. The paintings are seldom representations of forms in nature, except in the symbolic sense: they are records of inner visual experiences, bringing light out of darkness by the sensitive use of colours and forms, which, either in movement or rest, maintain specific relationships in space.
Ascension, 2021, steel, Courtesy of the artist & KÖNIG GALERIE
U: An artist's creativity can be rigorous or natural and flowing; how can you describe how you got into creating and your creative process?
R: The way in which artworks come to me varies, but it usually starts off with a trace, a faint scent that I must follow. It comes as a tone, a tingling feeling or a familiar but unknown sensation, I know it, but I can’t see it yet. Sometimes, it comes more completely, as a fully formed image or idea. But always there is a mystery to it, something more I have to discover through it.
Usually, the image is symbolic of something taking form within me. I make a quick sketch of the image before it strays from my vision. Then, I may make a drawing, testing out how to represent its meaning. If I like it, I will then start to map it out on the canvas and paint it. Sometimes, it just works, and sometimes, it must go through many iterations and re- paints before I am happy with it. And then, there it is, its own life form and universe to itself.
Space, 2021, wood, steel, Courtesy of the artist & KÖNIG GALERIE
U: What is your favorite thing about making art?
R: I believe there is magic involved in making art. Art is creativity in its purest form, with no restriction or function other than to be itself. My most important work is done in my sketchbook. Reading, researching, contemplating, planning. Over the years, I have compiled many, many sketchbooks full of ideas, only a fraction of which have found their physical form. It often takes me years for an idea to grow and evolve through different iterations until I feel ready to start making them. If I ever get lost, I can go through my sketchbooks, and they remind me who I am and why I am doing what I do.
Installation View: Rachel Garrard, TIME WILL NOT WAIT FOR US 31 MAY – 29 JUNE 2024 Courtesy of the artist & KÖNIG GALERIE
U: What can be expected from you in the future, art-wise? Are there any upcoming projects or exhibitions that you're particularly excited about?
R: The next project I am really excited about is working on an artist’s monograph.
Kamuna II, 2023, Courtesy of the artist & KÖNIG GALERIE
U: Can you describe who you are behind the canvas and how that deeply personal aspect of you influences your artwork? Is there any separation between the two, meaning you and your art?
R: My creativity requires authenticity. In order to get into the state in which art can move through me, I first need to let myself become raw. I like the description that the artist is the skinless one, the one who feels too much, the one who lets life cut through and break them again and again, and through that breaking open, the cosmos can move through them. This extraordinary sensitivity, this pain and ecstasy, is not something you choose, but it makes making art a necessary assimilation of experience.
Kamu, 2021, Courtesy of the artist & KÖNIG GALERIE
U: Is there a style or art period that you find most captivating? How does your unique approach to these styles or art periods change how art has been created and impacted not just the art world but also how we perceive and understand art?
R: I am interested in the times and cultures where art had a sacred or initiatory purpose. Where it was understood as a coded visual language that could be used by people for contemplation, evolution, and initiation, I believe art has the ability to reach beyond language and that we can absorb information and concepts from images. Symbolic forms not only describe something but also contain within them the essence of what they are describing. Art is not just for oneself, not just a marker of one’s own understanding. It is also a map for those who follow after us.
For more information about Rachel’s artwork, please visit her site here. She can also be found on Instagram here. A feature in the magazine of her latest exhibition can be found here.
