In my work I try to capture the impossible the swirling mist of a dreamers mind, as artists we are day dreamers and our business is capturing the impossible, holding on to it and showing it to the world.
But even as we think we have a firm grip, the dream shifts and changes due to each new experience. So as we prepare to project our perfect day dream on to a canvas or thought clay it will take a mighty shift as we then influence and distort our ideal with our clumsy mark making, lets say the idea is represented by a wet oil painting each time we have a new experience we smear our hands from one corner of the canvas to the other distorting our perfect image but seeing new images within the distortion that excite us as before so by the time the painting or sculpture is complete it is nothing like our original image, I believe this is why artist visit the same themes over and over as it is almost impossible to capture our own absorbing and beguiling thoughts, it's like trying to catch mist with a net, this is what keeps me up through the night leaping through the swirling fog of my unconscious mind with a net and a bucket, determined to return home with the impossible silence of these part imagined part remembered places.
Rachel Ann Stevenson (1982) was educated at the NULC College of Art and Design, The Oval School of Figurative Sculpture, The Royal Society of Portrait Sculpture and Taxidermy under the tuition of Mike Gadd, she works in figurative bronze and mixed media sculptures.
The subjects within Stevenson work are inherently autobiographical, as she creates starkly beautiful and haunting images, drawing on feelings of vulnerability, love, loss, longing, to desire and finally to be desired. In short, life in all its strained and strange beauty, often influenced by literature and fairy tales. Her works are based on narrative and characters. Seductive and macabre at the same time. Mysterious and charming characters, evoking scenes that we might have seen in a dream.
Stevenson's 'Vigils Echo' series captures a strange untamed beauty. The apparently fragile creatures look like they are made of porcelain, but are in reality strong and solid beings cast in lacquered bronze.
Stevenson has exhibited her works throughout the United Kingdom and in exhibitions and leading UK, Hong Kong and US art fairs. She has recently had solo shows in London, Brighton, Bath, and Oslo (Norway).