Rachel's biennial solo at the gallery. 

"A button, a bird’s egg, a key, a small spoon. Little items familiar to us all. Small possessions can be a precious keepsake or merely incidental, just one of many tangible fragments making up the texture of the background of our lives, giving shape and meaning to our memories.

Painting these small subjects allows me to bring some kind of order to the tangle of memories and emotions that crowd our inner lives. Realism is important; I come to understand my subject through careful study of its distinctive shape, texture and colour.

Key to my practice is the very deliberate consideration of composition. The seemingly straightforward placing of a much-handled old letter with a key, or the ordering of a group of spoons, becomes elevated from simple study to a more sophisticated contemplation of deeper emotions we all share."

Rachel Ross