Rachel Rossier
Artist Bio
Rachel Rossier, of Bethel, CT, is a painter and art educator. She works primarily with acryla gouache and acrylics on illustration board and canvas. Her portraits address the intrinsic beauty of the human person at rest, while her most recent paintings document her journey as a convert to the Catholic faith. The geometric shapes, intense colors, and floral images that fill her paintings are influenced by childhood experiences in the United States and Mexico. She earned a BA degree in art at WCSU with dual concentrations in illustration and painting. Her MFA studies have focused on painting.
2021 MFA Thesis
Artist Statement
I create paintings in service of the invisible reality, alluding to the sacramental and transcendental beauty of the Catholic Church. My paintings acknowledge that the boundaries we draw between the physical and the spiritual do not reflect the truth of human nature. As sacramentals provide us with a phenomenological experience of the transcendent, my paintings offer a visually tangible representation of the invisible graces freely given and received. I document my experience as a convert, exploring ideas of Christian identity, renewal, and the authentic agency and freedom that is found only in the love of God through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The narrative of a ragdoll turned human chronicles the lived experience of a soul called and carried from darkness into light through no merit of her own. Painting from life, memory, and imagination, my paintings reflect the psychological and spiritual landscapes in which we are attacked by an enemy who desires our eternal separation from love, and redeemed by a God who endured crucifixion for the opportunity to share a loving relationship with us eternally.