Rachel Ostrow is a Brooklyn-based painter and printmaker. She earned an M.F.A. in painting from Hunter College, a post-baccalaureate degree from the Maryland Institute College of Art, and a B.A. in Fine Arts from Wesleyan University. She is fascinated by the interconnectedness of the body and the mind and how physical movement and gesture can create visual illusions of space and form. She uses abstraction in its most creative sense: to make things that don’t already exist and that engage the imagination. She has had solo exhibitions at Planthouse (Manhattan, NY), 42 Social Club (Lyme, CT), Sunday Takeout (Brooklyn, NY), The Kenan Center (Lockport, NY), John Davis Gallery, (Hudson, NY), Saffron (Brooklyn, NY), and Todojunto Gallery (Barcelona, Spain). She has been included in exhibitions in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Montreal, Joshua Tree, CA, Santa Barbara, CA, Great Barrington, MA, Toledo, OH and Ballinskelligs, Ireland. She has been awarded residencies at the Gowanus Studio Space (Brooklyn, NY), The Joshua Tree Highlands Artist Residency (Joshua Tree, CA), The Millay Colony (Austerlitz, NY), The Kimmel Harding Nelsen Center (Nebraska City, NE), the Cill Rialag Project (Ballingskelligs, Ireland) and The Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT).
Artist Statement:
My paintings empower the viewer’s imagination to navigate their own visual experience. Existing somewhere between what is recognizable and what is otherworldly or abstract, they play with form, space, movement, light and character.
Using a squeegee, I unearth images by spreading transparent paint on a smooth panel. As the different paints and mediums are forced together under pressure from the rubber blade, they mix based on their inherent material properties. This creates highly detailed passages that are irregular, intricate, and often mimic the natural world.
While the gesture of my mark is (somewhat) controlled, the way the paint reacts underneath it is not. The balance between intention and chance in this technique echoes the dynamic between order and chaos in our universe. I believe it is this balance that creates abstract, often strange forms that resemble things in nature, and it is this resemblance that activates our imaginations.