Artist and landscape architect

Rachel is an award winning artist with a post graduate degree in Landscape Architecture, she has exhibited in Scotland, Belgium and Sri Lanka, and has works in far flung collections. Rachel's practice is rooted in where whe lives. In Sri Lanka and India, botanical illustrations and drawings of villages and towns predominated. In Belgium and the Scottish Borders, the concern is of the land and our cultural heritage; how the land is perceived, used and how to create conversations open to all artists, ecologists and community groups. Rachel is an enthusiastic educator and practitioner, and works both on site and in herstudio. She works in watercolour and oil paint, in sketchbooks and on canvas.

Paintings in oil on canvas

Landscape painting is a balance between sensation and analysis.

We are of the landscape and this conversation, for me, encompasses ecology, landuse and a sense of geological time to understand constantly changing presence.

The paintings require restraint necessary to achieve a certain kind of intensity.

Flemish Landscapes 2012-2018

Living in a flat landscape has perceptual challenges that can be disorientating but endlessly fascinating on analyisis.

This body of work was exhibited in the Lakken Halle, a Heritage Builidng in the medieval city of Zoutleeuw, once used for weaving.

"My work is about wherever I live, reflecting the land, its' textures, and its' uses. In this case, weaving together the strands of life in Flemish Brabant."

Botanical illustrations

I have been practicing this discipline since I graduated in 1993 and I received The Geoffrey Bawa Scholarship to study, as artist in residence, in Brief Garden and Lunuganga. Pen, ink and watercolour are my chosen mediums to use on heavy rag cotton watercolour paper of archival quality. I have continued to paint in botanical gardens in India, Belgium, Australia and the UK. Being self taught, I have developed a style of my own, which is true to life, but happily contravenes the stricter rules of Botanical Illustration. I derive inspiration from botanical artists who worked in 16th Century onwards, especially for composition. Many of these artists were intrepid women explorers or unknown Indian or Chinese catalogue artists who worked for botanical gardens and shipping comapnies trading plants to Kew Gardens.