Rachael Pease

I grew up among the forests and farms of rural Indiana in the 1980s, roaming far and wide without much supervision. Drawing has been part of my life for as long as I can remember, a way to disappear into daydreams. Over the past twenty-five years, that pursuit has carried me from Philadelphia to New York and Los Angeles, and eventually to the UK with my family in tow.

Wherever I’ve lived, those early landscapes have never left me. My work draws from places I’ve physically explored, particularly the ancient terrain of Bryce Canyon and the Bristlecone Pine forests of the American West. Through drawing, collage, and animation, I weave together observation, memory, dreams, and imagined narratives to explore themes of ecological survival, renewal, motherhood, and our emotional connection to the natural world. Trees remain central to my work, holding the same sense of wonder, freedom, and underlying fear I experienced as a child wandering through the forests of Indiana.

My process moves back and forth between digital and physical mediums: photographs become collages, collages become ink drawings on translucent mylar, where I spend hundreds of hours building layers of line and texture across both sides of the surface. The finished drawings are then digitally reimagined through layering, color, and animation.