'Next Door', 2018, oil on board, 30 x 35 cm. Finalist in the 2018 Wynne Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Rachel MILNE is included in We.Directory’s latest online article outlining their ‘Top contemporary artists to watch’.
Rachel Milne paints from life, and she means it literally. Originally from the UK and now based in Newcastle, NSW, she has built her practice around direct observation — setting herself in front of a subject, working through shifting light and the unstable reality of what is there, and finding, as she puts it, “a bit of alchemy” in that encounter. The camera, she says, makes too many decisions on her behalf. She would rather make them herself.
Milne’s focus is Intimism: the painterly tradition of domestic interiors, quiet rooms, lived-in studios, and the visual texture of everyday life. An unfinished meal, light on a bedside table, the gentle disorder of a working space — these are the kinds of moments her paintings return to. What gives the work its strength is the rigour beneath its calm surface: structure, tone, and colour pursued not as decoration, but as the means by which a painting can truly hold feeling.
– excerpt from the article.