Rachel Coyne

---

Peonies 1

---

Peonies 2

---

Peonies 3

---

Peonies 4

---

Peonies 5

---

The Garden Moment: Practice, Presence, and Letting the Medium Follow

For these images I used peony flower petals from my garden.  I had something I like to call my “garden moment” about 16 years ago.  I realized -about both art and life – that I had a lot of long term goals, but that in the day to day I was really struggling.  I needed to have more than helped, delighted, carried me in the present moment. Gardening helped. The regular practice of art – nightly, daily – even when your tired – helps.  A lot of artists are tempted to throw everything into a project, setting aside months and years for something shiny at the end of the process.  But it gets harder and harder to recover from that year after year after year.  I think it enriches the work to enjoy your life while you make your work.  Or maybe I just don’t like to suffer very much anymore.    

I trained and worked primarily as a painter for many years.  However, I’m much less wed to form than I have ever been before.  These pieces in Rawhead include digital photography with an iphone – something I wouldn’t have even considered a few years ago.  More and more I land on the message I want to deliver and then the medium follows.  This has led to experimentation with resin, photography, collage and public art.  Changing mediums so often is a bit of a hire wire act – always feeling like you’re learning as you go, rather than being able to rely on my skill with my craft.  I have to say it’s a lot more fun.  

The engine of the work is in the blank spaces – where you can see the outline of the petals that were lifted and removed from the paint.  Flower painting is a particularly storied genre.  Still I felt that these images created something new – an almost human tissue like feeling in some of the impressions, wet and heavy like a functioning organ.  

---

---