Rachael Levine

BIO

Rachael’s studio is located in the seaside town of St. Ives, U.K. She is inspired by nature. Her drawings and paintings are relatively small in size, yet intense and emotionally charged. She is the daughter of noted Canadian Author and Poet, Norman Levine (1923 – 2005). Norman was part of the St. Ives artistic community in Cornwall, U.K., and friends with painters Patrick Heron and Francis Bacon. Contrasting Rachael’s abstract artistic style with that of her father’s, his written expression has been described as not ‘abstract’, rather, ‘concrete’. He wrote in his 1993 essay, ‘Sometimes It Works’, “The leaner the language, the more suggestive’. (1)

"Her paintings are visual representations of long held feelings, memories and responses, as unique visual translations into psycho-synaesthesic images of her inner life. They also echo her experiences and recognition of the outer nature of the land and its vegetative forms - the two being brought and woven together in the paintings. Although small in physical size, they convey a sense of the cosmic endlessness of rhythmic space, time and the complexity of evolving life forms". (1)

-- John Charles Clark 2011

(1) Oldham, A. (2005, July 1). Norman Levine: Novelist w...

SELECTED LITERATURE

Recent: Exhibiting Artist, represented by Postma Fine Art, 2014 Art Toronto International Art Fair catalogue.

OUT OF THE MOUTH OF THE HISTORY
-- John Charles Clark 2015

"From Edvard Munch’s 'The Cry', of 1895, to Francis Bacon's 'Screaming Popes' of the 1950s".
"From Prinzhorn's collection of drawings of the 'disturbed' of the early 1900s, to Antonin Artaud's spell and portrait drawings of the 1930s and 40s. From Dada to Art Brut and on to the Raw Vision artists of the 1980s - We at last come to the drawings and paintings of Rachael Levine, 'the last existential woman painter' symbolically speaking. Much of her work has rarely been seen, simply because it never fitted into the locality of art in West Cornwall, England, and St Ives in particular, where she lived and worked. Any showing it did receive has been in Scotland, France, and recently Canada".

"Levine's works are strong, tough, full of anguish, vulnerability and torment. In comparison, viewing work by Pollack or Bacon seems like they are having a fun time”.

“Her work is not for the faint hearted”.

“Their compressed scale emphasizes each paintings internal tensions, serving to heighten our response to their congested finely layered...