Raina Verhey

Raina Verhey is an oil painter based in Central Oregon, known for her highly emotive western landscapes. Especially focused on desert regions, she employs strong, gestural brush strokes, swaying liminal space and woven earth tones to portray the ethereal spirit of the American West. Born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1999, Verhey was impacted by a lineage of mule-packing surveyors and travellers, thus heading West herself at a young age. Themes often found in her work are the juxtaposition of stone and hardy flora, towering swells of earth against minimal swaths of foreground, all meant to push the viewer outside of the developmental or societal usage of landscapes, and into the great story of humankind’s dependence and fragility in the Land itself. Verhey is self-taught through methods of plein air, dedicated experimental years and time spent in the backcountry of the American southwest with a sketchpad and a camera, training her eye and developing a unique compositional voice.