Rachel will be exhibiting in Oxford during Art Weeks in St Luke’s church on Abingdon road. She is making a short film to show the story of her Long Covid journey and how art is helping her recovery, having filmed video diaries on her phone from the the start of 2020. She will also be displaying highlights from her first year of learning abstract art - her large acrylic and spray paint canvases, pastel sketches, and acrylic collages. She makes abstract expressive landscapes filled with energy, joy and a renewed appreciation for the world outside her window.
Rachel is exhibiting alongside her friend Alice Kwan - a wonderful painter she met when they were both accepted into Oxford Art Society's Open exhibition. Rachel will try to be present with her work at the exhibition as much as her health allows but if you would like to ensure you meet her, please email in advance to check.
Rachel began painting in April 2023, in her third year of being housebound and bedridden by Long Covid. When her Occupational Therapist first suggested trying a bit of art, Rachel was reluctant to ‘waste’ any of her tiny precious energy reserves on a non-essential task. Long Covid comes with disabling fatigue that is like having a defective battery that never fully recharges overnight and plummets to nothing as soon as you do a tiny task, such as cleaning your teeth. Wasting energy on painting would mean no energy for vital tasks, such as preparing food. It was over 30 years since her Art A Level but Rachel still had her original pastels set from school so one afternoon she gave pastels a go from bed...and, to her surprise, rather than taking away her energy, it seemed to give her some energy back. And the more art she tried, the more she recovered.
Rachel started to use photos to sketch the outside world that she missed so terribly. She depicted the landscapes she longed to cycle or run through again, and imaginary landscapes she invented in bed. After a few months, she turned her bathroom into a makeshift studio so she could take-on bigger canvases by painting on the floor and crawling over them. She also experimented with spray paints, inks and collage. In the Summer she submitted one of her first spray paint pictures into the Oxford Art Society Open Exhibition to see if it was any good - and was astonished when it was accepted. Thanks to the inspiration and mentoring she received from hero professional artists on Instagram, particularly Bethany Kohrt and Louise Fletcher, Rachel discovered a whole new world in abstract landscapes - something she had never encountered at school. She tries to infuse every landscape with the magic, energy and passion she feels towards the natural world outside.
By the end of 2023 Rachel had recovered enough to be able to leave the house once a week in a wheelchair and she had painted every day that she was well enough to - both of which were unthinkable at the start of the year. Recovery will still take years more; Rachel is only just starting to walk short distances and is working hard every day on her dysfunctional breathing and energy pacing. She may never get back to being the gym-addict cyclist she was before, or resume her previous career as a writer/producer for Digital Media, but the silver lining is she has found her way back to art.