Rachael Zur Gallery
Artist Bio
Rachael Zur’s expanded paintings blend sculptural physicality with traditional painting techniques. Her art practice utilizes an assortment of materials to paint on: plaster, pumice, ceramics, and fabric. The paintings depict objects that can be found in living rooms, though the architectural space itself is left undefined. Zur received her MFA in 2019 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has exhibited her work throughout the United States. The artist has worked as a Program Mentor in the Low Residency MFA Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2020). Zur currently resides in the greater Portland Oregon metropolitan area with her husband and their three children.
Artist Statement
Traces of us linger in the physical world, even in our absence. There is an evocative nature to domestic objects and spaces—items within homes hold the residual energy of lives lived long after people are gone.
My work depicts ordinary objects from living rooms belonging to people I have loved
and lost. However it is not grief that I am interested in conveying, but the residue
of the affection that is left behind. Texture becomes a way of communicating touch—my
own touch held in my work, and what my viewer imagines feeling with their own hand.
My touch is held in the work, similar to how a room or object holds the essence of
a person when they are no longer present. Contour lines move across the surface of
the works like phantoms; other times a contour line defines the edge of a work, (articulating
a wing or hand), as a fully present body.
www.rachaelzur.com
