Danielle Rahe Fox explores the balance of abandon and control within her work. Using acrylic glazes, tracing paper, graphite and sewn line she creates spatial volume in her paintings. Her choices of color and mediums are intended for the viewer explore and contemplate.

Danielle earned a B.S. in Drawing and Painting from Biola University in Southern California in 2001. She is currently pursuing a MFA in Abstract Painting from the Academy of Art in San Francisco, CA. After teaching art for three years and leading an art history tour in Italy, she is now a full time artist spending her time in the studio both in San Francisco and Santa Cruz, where she resides.

Danielle Rahe Fox

My art contains colors to create intentional psychological responses. Using acrylic glazes I create thin layers of paint that filter light through each translucent layer, allowing the history of the painting to be exposed. With graphite pencil, I draw gestural lines that are minimal and expressive, creating organic forms. Emulating the graphite lines, I sew on tracing paper, which continues the expression of the line.

When creating organic abstract landscapes, I choose colors and use sewing elements to show the female dichotomy. The sewing medium has been normally used by women in past generations to repair, create, bind, or put pieces together to create a whole.

Mixed Media on Paper, 8′ x 8′. 2008.

Please excuse the image, new photo to come soon!

Mixed Media on Wood Panel, 36″ x 36″. 2008.

Please excuse the image, new photo to come soon!

Over the past month I have been encouraged by my mentor to give myself a break from painting and take a break, think about my work, and write.  I have not been in school for the entire month of January.  This past week I have been lying in the sun, reading books, and endless magazines trying to escape for a moment before school begins and I am back working on my thesis project.   As an artist, I believe you have to take a break otherwise you get burnt out and never come up from the endless cycle in your head of producing and creating work.  

 Anyhow, all that to say I have been thinking about my work a bit.  Excited about a new direction and watching it evolve.  I have let it drive me and show me where it wants to go, but now I have to begin asking the tough “why” questions so I can begin to formulate an artist statement.  I am not convinced that every artist works this way—creating, letting your work explode out of you, and then realize what it is teaching you and saying to you.  It almost is a spiritual experience when you look back to see the work you have created and not even realized the extent of what it is communicating.  I am sure other artists are more intentional and plan their conceptual agenda first and then execute the work.  Neither is the right way.  They both work.  They both end with the same result.  At least for myself this is true.

This new work that I have been exploring and birthing needs questions asked and now it is time for me to answer them.  I am not sure I am ready to answer them as I learn new things about the work with every new piece.  Some of the questions I need to begin asking myself have to do with the formal qualities that will help me finalize my conceptual intentions, like why integrate sewing into these pieces?  I have been very interested in working with string, sewn tracing paper in particular.  I have never used a sewing machine in my life and just began using one this past year.  I am drawn towards the tight line it makes, the precise stitch, the control it adds to an abstract painting.  I am drawn towards the way the sewn line interacts with the graphite lines I am drawing.  The graphite lines are minimal and are expressive.  They are sometimes drawn quick and sometimes drawn slower with more precision, similar to how I use the sewing machine.  I like the idea that sewing machines are used to bind two things together to make them one.  I like that they have been used by women primarily in the past.  

 I think it is interesting the paradox that arises in the work being that I am using a medium that has been primarily used by women in past generations, but then I am combining it with a painting approach that was essentially invented and established mainly by men breaking rules.  These conceptual innuendos were not intended to show up in the work, but it has unbeknownst to me.  I can see how these ideas could seep out from my work being that these are things that I struggle with–the role of women in society (both past and present), the pressure society puts on women from a more conservative view to a more open minded view, the desires within a woman’s heart (being that they differ within each individual).  I see these things are not just thoughts floating in my mind, but something I long to bring resolution to in my own life.  I am learning who I am as an adult and continuing to develop my sense of self here and now.  Some of that might be exposing itself in work as you can see the struggle between “nesting” and “flying.”   Maybe the sewing alludes to just that.  It begins to draw a seam between the desires to “nest” and to “fly.”  One is not better than the other (well, depending on who you are talking to).  It does not need to be two separate pieces of a person but can coexist.  A woman can fly and nest.  This is obviously not a new concept for the majority of men and women in the 21st century but for some reason I need to learn that lesson.  I need to instill it into my own life and be okay with that.  Seasons of life.  Seasons of the soul.  Seasons within art making.  Seasons.  They are not meant to be isolated.  They are meant to be hemmed together, sewn together, patched together.  The ugly, the beautiful, the plain, the mistake, the goal reached—all make up the story.