About
Artist’s Statement: Rachael McCampbell
I am primarily a landscape and still life painter. I work from very small paintings on paper, canvas and panel up to 48 x 82” (and larger) paintings using primarily acrylic, oil and Cold Wax Medium on cradled birch panels. My works range from representational to impressionistic and at times to complete abstraction. But no matter what I paint, my shapes and themes are nature-based.
My palette varies from moody monochromatic tones to bright, high chroma colors. When painting plein air, I take time to assess the color notes of my location before committing to my study. I will often return to the studio to do a more in-depth painting based on my studies, photos and memories of what I saw. I’m interested in capturing the feeling of the place I observed.
Texture and line work are a continuum in my paintings. By using textured acrylic, oil and Cold Wax Medium, I can achieve multiple layers of impressionistically applied color and texture. I like to add and subtract paint using not only brushes but squeegees, brayers, paper towels and bamboo skewers until the story I’m trying to tell gets told. I am a process oriented painter in the sense that I like to allow the painting to inform me what it needs and follow an unsubscribed path to the end result.
Having grown up on a farm in east TN, I was interested in observing the land’s inherent beauty. I sketched and journaled and watched my mother paint alone and in groups. I painted as a teenager on our farm focusing on the play of light and shadows off of structures and the reflections of colors and shapes in the ponds and lakes around me. After earning my BFA and working as a commercial and fine artist in NYC and LA, it’s the rural environment that informs my work and continues to inspire me most today.
Viewing and experiencing the landscape over the years has created an awareness of the disappearance of our open spaces through over development. I support various organizations who care about preserving our environment such as the Land Trust for TN and I am on the advisory council for the Harpeth Conservancy.
I’m very interested in creating Public Art in hospital environments and corporate spaces. I love reaching a lot of people with my art and hopefully inspiring them as they enter those public spaces.
I also enjoy taking groups of painters on workshops both in Europe (Italy, Spain, England and Ireland) and in the US on trips both organized by me and ones where I’ve been the invited teacher. Encouraging others to find their joy in creating art has become a great passion of mine that in turn feeds my art practice as well.
Writing about my art experiences are also something I’m interested in doing. I have had many articles published. I also enjoy teaching online on my YouTube Channel McCampbell Art Studio.
I show my art in art galleries and in group and solo museum shows. I am currently working on a solo exhibit for the Customs House Museum in Clarksville, TN in 2025. I also am scheduled in 2024 to teach workshops in middle TN, the Smokies, Ireland, Chattanooga and Los Angeles. I will be painting at various juried/judged plein air events in the southeast in 2024.
Organic gardening and cooking are passions I enjoy with my husband, along with entertaining friends on the back porch or in the creek behind our home in Franklin, TN. I have a fabulous son, daughter-in-law, two grandchildren and two step-daughters. I love antiques, live in an old farmhouse and occasionally get to drive our 1949 F-1 truck named Lucille.
I am a GOLDEN Acrylics Artist Educator and a Holbein Brand Ambassador. I teach workshops both domestic and internationally. Please contact me for public or private commissions at [email protected]
Rachael is a member of:
NOAPS: The National Oil and Acrylic Painter’s Society
OPA: Oil Painters of America society
AIS: American Impressionist Society
Rachael is a published writer and contributor to:
Inside Art- Streamline Publishing
BIO:
Artist Bio: Rachael McCampbell
After earning her BFA from the University of Georgia, Rachael McCampbell worked for the fashion designer Emilio Pucci in Florence Italy. She then moved to NYC and studied at the New School and worked for advertising illustrator Braldt Bralds. She then spent a year in London with Christie’s Auction House studying fine and decorative arts. McCampbell then moved to Los Angeles where she lived and worked in the contemporary art gallery business and as a commercial and fine artist.
McCampbell now resides outside of Nashville, TN and paints full time and hold workshops in her studio in Centerville, TN. She also takes artists on Plein Air workshops to study painting both in the US and abroad. Her work has primarily been exhibited in galleries and museums in solo shows such as at the District Gallery in Knoxville, TN, the Copper Fox in Franklin, TN and the Parthenon Museum in Nashville, TN. Her work most recently was juried in to shows such as:
- the “Best in America” show, 2023, by The National Oil and Acrylics Painters Society at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA,
- the “Breaking Through: The Rise of American Women Artists” exhibition at the Clarksville Museum of Art, TN, 2022, juried by American Women Artists and
- the “Best of America Small Works Exhibit,” Juried by the National Oil and Acrylic Painter’s Society, 2022 at the Beverly McNeil Gallery, Birmingham, AL.
- McCampbell will be featured in a solo exhibition of her landscape work at the Clarksville Museum in 2025.
Creating Public Art for institutions is also an important part of her oeuvre. McCampbell completed a large kinetic (computerized and motorized) installation for Ascension St. Thomas Hospital’s new wing in Midtown, Nashville in 2022. She installed a 21 foot long mural for the new 11th floor of Vanderbilt Children’s hospital, Nashville, TN in 2020 and designed and installed two entire installations comprising of both painting and sculptures, at the East TN Childrens’ Hospital oncology ward, Knoxville, TN, and a designed and created a backlit painting for it’s chapel, 2019-2021.
Sharing the joy of making art has always been an important part of McCampbell’s career. Through her company, Artistic Adventures America and Abroad, she leads artists to paint in countries such as Italy, England, Spain and Ireland. In America she has taken groups to Ghost Ranch and the Smoky Mountains. Other schools and organizations regularly invite her teach at places like Arrowmont Art School, Gatlinburg, TN and The Vienna Arts Society, Vienna, VA, The Art Barn, Cincinnati, Ohio and The Townsend Atelier, Chattanooga, TN.
McCampbell’s work is purchased by collectors both in the US and Abroad and is in the permanent collection of the Tennessee State Museum, Nashville, TN and the Latin Recording Artists Museum, Los Angeles, CA.
Writing has been another long time passion and McCampbell’s articles have been published by Streamline Publishing in InsideArt, Number One, Inc. Magazine, Thrive Global and she was a columnist for Nashville Arts Magazine and Yogi Times Magazine in Los Angeles.
McCampbell was juried in to a month-long residency at Estudio Corazon Artist Residency at Ghost Ranch, Abiquiu, NM, 2022 and was juried into the Fryer/Hunter Art Symposium, Bellows Falls, VT, 2023.
For more information about how to purchase her work or to learn about taking workshops, go to www.rachaelmccampbell.com.
