Rachell Sumpter paints small and big splendors into a desolate, peopled wilderness. Using layered gouache and pastel, she paints scenes that are at once of community and of isolation. Figures stand in heavy, embroidered clothing, hidden and yet seen, in procession, in ceremony or in witness to a wonder. There are melting mountain tops and bonfires, ghosts and graves; vast monuments and intimate moments that speak to the legacies a generation leaves, to the promises it makes. Sumpter borrows symbols from religious and political traditions, from dreams, from our threatened natural world. And yet, amid these artifacts, memories and future relics, there is a human closeness, a physical intimacy. This lends an optimism to what might otherwise seem an elegy. In this bleak and changing landscape there are celebrations as well as lamentations, and with deceptively simple strokes she creates an iconography for the longed-for and the feared: a mythology of mystery, pleasure and the foreshadowing of loss.
+ Limited-edition, exclusive to 20x200
+ Museum quality: archival inks, 100% cotton rag paper unless noted
+ Signed + numbered certificate of authenticity included
+ Directly supports the artist
+ Handcrafted custom-framing is available
Our quoted dimensions are for the size of paper containing the images, not the printed image itself. We do not alter the aspect ratio, nor do we crop or resize the artists’ originals. All of our prints have a minimum border of .5 inches to allow for framing.
