Bio

Rachael (b.1987, North Tyneside) works from her studio at One Three One, North Shields. She makes abstract, geometric work in a set colour palette across a range of mediums. Her work includes text-based pieces where she considers ideas around motherhood and women and their work.

She has had an unconventional route into art having studied law at Northumbria University and practised as a Barrister. In 2014, she took a sabbatical from the Bar and did the following: co-founded two businesses (A Woven Plane and Buy The Kilo); worked as a Special Advisor to Karl Turner MP (then Solicitor General) at Westminster; work as an Orders Manager at antique shop, HOWE London; documented over 1000 porch tiles through _tilecatcher; and volunteered with the Black Health Initiative, Koestler Arts and Smartworks.

During this time she began exploring her own creativity. She gradually started to figure out her practice around 2021, taking the step in 2023 to focus on it. She is currently on The Newbridge Project’s Collective Studio programme (2024-2025).

Statement

Seeing Lygia Pape’s Book of Night and Day in 2015 created a surge of feeling and emotion within me: a making-of-sense moment. It opened the door to understanding myself.

I am drawn to red and blue and with those colours, through lines and forms, create a visual language to communicate with. I see patterns everywhere from nature to architecture: the horizontal lines in the bark of silver birch trees to tiled buildings. This combination of sensitivities is the backbone of how I make work. I enjoy variations and versions of similar things and frequently build this into my work. I find some ideas are better expressed through one medium or material over another.

There is an element of advocacy in my art practice where some of my work speaks to a broader issue. With my early pull to law having been justice and to help people, I hope to still do that, where appropriate, through my art. Having worked in law, politics and business, art is my home and the place that I want to respond from and create from.

I am self-taught with aspects of my learning being self-guided, as and when it arises. An example would be learning how to create the hard-edge finish in my paintings from geometric artist Theresa Poulton.

Study

Collective Studio, The Newbridge Project 2024/2025

Helix Artists’ Agency Programme 2023

First Class Law LLB Hons (BVC Exempting) Northumbria University 2006-2010

For more information, please complete the contact form below or email me on rachaeldeebrienart@gmail.com