Rainen Knecht

Crazy Arms

March 13 – April 14, 2015

“Now blue ain't the word for the way that I feel
And the storm's brewing in this heart of mine
This ain't no crazy dream I know that it's real
And you're someone else's love now you're not mine...”

For Rainen Knecht painting is a lonely practice.

Over the last year she has been living in the woods of Washington State, these works are the result of feeling isolated from the youth market and share a much deeper relationship to Outsider or Folk Artists from the Pacific North West. Rainen considers these works to be “unabashedly traditional, a naïve gesture of defiance, free and imaginative, paintings from the mind, painting as therapy”.

Her works are intuitive; the surfaces are constantly changing, making new discoveries and finding new problems, spontaneous gestures leading to controlled contradictions. Sometimes the result is a painting within a painting, they remain personal but are always true to the medium, “I care about the medium”. These works are a direct reference to loss, suffering and the desire to understanding compassion in her practice. These works are funny, deep, and sometimes painful. A mist of dark humor is prevalent. Surrealism, symbolism, vulnerability, fairy tales, “woman energy”, and heavy feelings of physicality, fantasy and disturbing realities, adorn the picture planes.

No apologies.