Rachel Bess

My paintings portray a scene as though you are looking though a peephole and you may be looking at some type of sacred event that contains a touch of the surreal. Instead of the usual images in sacred paintings, I use elements from the natural world, often elevating them to the focal point of the scene and either altering or entirely replacing traditional iconography. These bits of the sciences carry a thread throughout my work about people's desire to understand and manipulate the world around them. I believe this desire is often explained by the hope that if people can control other aspects of nature, then maybe they have a shot at controlling the heavy hand of natural fate and overcoming what nature eventually has in store for all of us.