About
Rachel Dove is an aspiring biodynamic artist born and raised in Hamilton Ontario. Taking inspiration from her daily life, Rachel makes large archives representing certain locations and those who interact with those places. There is a topographical approach to the rendering of suburban architecture, but what is unique about Dove is that she has produced her works primarily with inks she has manufactured from botanical materials collected in the neighbourhood. She collects plants and other organic matter from the site to create her own botanical inks and pigments that are true to that specific area. Moving back into her childhood home, Rachel has drawn inspiration from her own neighbourhood, collecting and observing the neighbour’s properties and mapping out the street. She represents all the manmade circumstances in her botanical inks to juxtapose against her plastic like acrylic paint that represents all the nature portions of the area. This work is based on an observation process that has been informed by a lifetime of quotidian experiences, all geared to a sense of place. The artist transforms the quotidian world of daily existence into a long disciplined look that observational painters have undertaken since the 17th century and here the process is yet again, purposely empirical.