Artist for Day 27 – RACHEL FAVELLE
Rachel Favelle is an Australian Pop Surreal artist, with a profound love of Visual Art that unfolded itself at an early age. Growing up in country Australia; surrounded by rugged mountain ranges, dusty roads and watering holes, Rachel spend most of her childhood exploring and making meaning of her environment. Coupled with the creative influence of her mother, who was an avid oil painter, she quickly became fascinated by the potential for Art to express those intangible experiences and narratives that unfolded in her mind as a child.
In 2000 Rachel pursued an academic career in art education, completing a degree in Secondary Art Education. Rachel’s creative art endeavours became oriented towards guiding and inspiring young people in the art industry and to this day she remains a practicing Visual Arts teacher. However, it was her earlier studies during her BVA in Illustration that kept calling her back years later for the need to tell her own stories and revisit that inquisitive mindset of childhood.
Consequently, in 2010 Rachel decided to focus on her own creative practice and since that time her artwork has been shown across Australia as well as international galleries in Portugal and the United States. She released her first children’s picture book, ‘The Bear Hug’ in 2018 and in 2019 Rachel showcased her international solo show in Chicago titled, ‘Out of the Velvet Blackness’ which explored childhood creativity and its decline in adulthood. Using oils as her medium, Rachel’s richly coloured and fanciful worlds, inhabited by quirky characters, imbue the works with narrative and a contemplative stillness. Early works were inspired by antiquated childhood toys, surreal environments and puns but as her work has developed it has become underpinned by a deeper exploration into the connection between environmental nature and human nature.