Rachell Sumpter “Winter Sun”

Foley Gallery

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Foley Gallery presents Winter Sun, a solo exhibition featuring new paintings by Rachell Sumpter.

Using pastel, gouache, and watercolor, Sumpter creates detailed utopian dream spaces that conjure scenes of female camaraderie, partnership, and solitude. The tone of her colorful and dreamlike scenes is inspired by the current political climate, and a need to take a stance against it.

Each painting is a tableau, an experience of women claiming spaces that are usually controlled by men or places that women operate with a predetermined set of established rules that they did not create themselves – traveling in vans, staring at the moon, going places with a child, female compassion, friendship, and partnership. Sumpter’s delicate and luminous palette open up new possibilities for women being in these “forbidden spaces”, working and living together on their own, perhaps in a dream state or utopian ideal.

In Winter, a rainbow halos a group of women loading delicate possessions into a van, surrounded by a crystal white forest. In Mother Mode a woman and her child are prepped and ready to enter a lush cave, choosing to ignore its fanged entrance. Compression Sleeve shows a group of women in a huddle, drawing power from one another while emitting a powerful aura of color.

Rachell Sumpter lives and works in Seattle, Washington. She received her MFA from California College of the Arts, and her BFA from ArtCenter College of Design. In addition to her painting practice, Sumpter creates sculpture, stop motion animation and comics. She is a professor at Seattle Pacific University, as well as an illustrator with clients such as the New York Times, Buzzfeed and Penguin Random House books.