Art workshop with Rachael Addis – The Art of Wellbeing
Rachel will start off the workshop with an introduction to her work and the techniques that she uses. She will then move onto a ‘Visual Journaling’ workshop where she introduces you mark making and meditation drawing techniques. Following exploring these techniques you will begin work on a meditation study. This we then be extended to look at journaling techniques including daily pages, text, image, colour and meaning. The second part of the workshop will utilise what has already been explore in the earlier part of the workshop.
Rachael is a contemporary painter based at Rogue Artists’ studios in Manchester. Her practice is fundamentally a mark making process through which she creates abstract landscapes by applying a multitude of painted layers and patterns to the surface of canvas and paper.
Her formative years, spent between the Lake District and Asia, had an important inspiration on the process, colours and aesthetic of her work. Throughout this time, Zen Buddhism was a key influence. Rachael was also heavily influenced by 1950’s abstract expressionism painters, and the philosophies from these cultures and movements. Her current paintings seek to establish a contemplative and meditative aspect, both for the viewer and for herself. She uses unconventional processes to create her paintings, abandoning paintbrushes for found and recycled materials such as discarded fragments of toys.
Following her degree in Fine art, Rachael completed the three year postgraduate programme at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.
As well as exhibiting UK wide, selling her paintings nationally and internationally, her work has been accepted into several exhibitions. This includes the Jackson’s Open Painting Prize 2021, Ing Discerning Eye, Visual art Open and the Art Gemini Prize 2021 in which she won the People’s choice award. Rachael was a featured artist in the BBC documentary about the Royal Academy summer exhibition 2020. She is delighted to have recently won the accolade of “Manc of the Year” with the Manchester based arts organisation Cotton on Manchester. Rachael also interviews artists about their practice on Instagram Live. Her previous talks can be found on her Instagram account.
