Raised in a tiny Colorado town at the base of Red Rocks Park, Rachel’s playground was the red rocks, pine forests, ravines, and rivers of the Rocky Mountains. She grounded her soul in the soil and trees then hiked up the hogback ridge to set it free in the endless sky over the immense plains to the east. Her spirit was equally infused with art in a colorful multicultural home full of artisan handcrafts from around the world and a large collection of contemporary abstract art.

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Rachel danced from childhood through her late twenties. At Reed College (BA, Economics and Dance 2003) she studied modern and post-modern dance and the "experimental new media” of the time: sound sensitive stages, video feedback loops, and dance for the camera. She danced and choreographed for the stage and dance films making collaborative work with artists of other disciplines

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These digital experiments led her to the newly computer-based tools for graphic design and a career as a graphic designer for over 12 years. Focusing on design for the arts, Rachel’s clients included jewels of the Berkshires: Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, Edith Wharton’s The Mount, and The Colonial Theatre; Chicago's Haymarket Books, and Seattle's Book-It Repertory Theatre.

 

Now based in Seattle, Rachel shifted her creative focus to painting during the Pandemic. Her practice reflects her creative roots in experimental dance. She approaches the paint as a physical object, with its own body and weight, to be explored kinetically through improvisational processes that produce rich layers and texture on the canvas, always evoking a sense of movement.

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Rachel was a member of The Ballard Collective until summer 2025, when they lost their building to arson. She is currently taking part in The Contemporary Painter’s Studio Apprenticeship, a year-long virtual apprenticeship with Jennifer Schoonmaker, who is based at Rochester Institute of Technology. Expected completion, November 2027.