Photo by Donnelly Marks
"Art can evoke joy and pleasure, both emotionally and aesthetically... and I'm here for bringing more joy and pleasure to our world."
BIOGRAPHY
Rachel Goldsmith is a New York based, frequently traveling, artist who paints with water-based paints and PLA bioplastic. She received her Masters of Art and Design Education Degree from Pratt Institute in 2007 and her Bachelor of Fine Arts and Bachelor of Arts Degrees from The University of Michigan in 2003. Rachel taught middle school Visual Arts in New York City from 2007-2012. In addition to winning several “Best in Show” awards, in 2014 Rachel was commissioned by the inventors of the 3Doodler 3D printing pens to create a piece for MoMA Design Store. Since then she has committed to developing techniques to use this new medium as a language in her art. Her most public pieces to date are two 40’ x 8.5’ murals floating in New York Harbor's Brooklyn Bridge Marina... her artwork is now embedded in the view of Brooklyn from Manhattan and of the Manhattan Skyline from Brooklyn.
ART STATEMENT
"Each piece I create is an abstract chapter of an old story – the universal struggle to control our environment while our environment controls us. The lines and movement I see in the world repeat in the obsessively detailed structures and emotions that I map onto the surface of my pieces.
My line of influence runs from the precise representations of Ernst Haeckel, through the perfectly imperfect geometric abstractions of Sol LeWitt and Agnes Martin, to the contours that emerge from Dale Chihuly’s physically dynamic and demanding creative process. My work pulls and extends that thread.
Not only do I paint with acrylic, I also paint with a 3D printing pen, extruding lines of colored plastic. I devoted several years to developing the new language for this medium, allowing me to fully (and more powerfully) express the ideas and emotions I had spent a career communicating with paint and ink. The “struggle for control” metaphor becomes very real for me every time I rely on this new, imperfect technology as my translator. But it’s not about the pen.
I paint what I see. I blur the margin between two and three dimensions. I spontaneously abstract emotions with shapes, color and lines. I repeat. I repeat. Most of my pieces do not have a master plan, and even if they do, the work controls me as much as I control it. But that tension, and the tension my art represents, is a happy tension. Art can evoke joy and pleasure, both emotionally and aesthetically... and I'm here for bringing more joy and pleasure to our world."
"Rachel has leveraged this relatively new medium to such an impressive degree, well beyond what anyone could imagine. Her new work is beautifully compelling! BRAVA!"
-Carla Rae Johnson