Rock with Lemons Painting

Rachael Hooper is a Melbourne-based artist whose work blends contemporary still life objects with landscapes and abstract elements. Her evocative and ethereal paintings embrace themes of conflict and duality in ordinary life, contrasting the romance of escape and freedom with the mundane reality of the everyday. Through layers of paint and subtle colour explorations the process of her painting treads a line between restraint and freedom. Her paintings evoke a snapshot of an image like a memory or a dream. Rachael has exhibited extensively at galleries and Artist Run Initiatives nationally since 2001. She has been represented by Australian Galleries and on the board of ARI’s for many years. She has been short-listed for several prizes including the Arthur Guy Memorial Prize 2017. She was the winner of the 2008 City of Albany Art Prize and was the recipient of Australia Council grants 2001 and 2008. Rachael has worked as a painter and props maker in schools, for film and television, theatre and theme parks. She was assistant director of a team of twenty painters in Macau for a year working in casinos and theme parks including a 7-storey volcano roller coaster ride. She now paints in her studio in Preston, Melbourne.