Storm Over High Desert Painting

Rhea Cutillo is an oil painter working with open space initiatives and conservation efforts /// Rhea Cutillo was born and raised in Oaks, Pennsylvania, spending a decade between Los Angeles and San Francisco, where she graduated from Mills College in 2011. Her early work was concerned with non-being; the space between destruction and creation in regards to a loss of self. She combined immersive installation with large scale oil paintings, working with light, sound, glass, and textiles. In 2016 Rhea became an internationally showing artist upon acceptance into the award- winning festival List í Ljósi. That Which is Past, That Which is Now was a process piece in 4 motions, created in Seyðisfjörður, Iceland, as an environment that experiences long periods of darkness, and long periods of light, in perpetual exchange. Her work has since showed in Beijing, Melbourne, and Los Angeles. Freeman’s Auction House debuts her work to the Philadelphia community. Rhea is a scholarship recipient of the Barnes-de Mazia Certificate program, and will be beginning her MFA this Fall, 2020. My work focuses on a search for open space both internally and externally. I am interested in epistemic experience, both in the physical and immaterial realms. My work seeks truth in the universality of human experience. At the crux of my creative process is an ambiguity of identity. What is human existence without social context? Whats is that space of being far removed from order and image? Absence and presence coexist within my images; both a dissolution and coherency of identity occur. What sense of place is created? My practice consists of documentation and interpretation of the natural world and how I exist in it. My photographs are intrigued by vast landscapes, often with horizon lines that stretch out indefinitely - thereby being infinite, yet also unattainable. I often imagine myself in these worlds; my paintings are meant to be expansions of space into the immaterial, cerebral, and emotional realms. Often, the focus of my work moves into the physicality of open space. Where does it still exist in this world without political or industrial control? Global environmental issues and conversations about reciprocity with the land influence my imagery. I believe that the importance of finding empty space internally is just as crucial to the human spirit as conserving open land is to nature and her ecosystems.