Raychael Stine b. 1981 — Raychael Stine makes luscious, joyful paintings that integrate multiple painterly languages and approaches to mark, texture, and levels of visual legibility, allowing for playful slippage between formal and material abstraction and traditional devices of painterly representation. Stine’s work ranges from realistic paintings of her dogs to abstracted color swatches across the canvas. Across all styles in Stine’s oeuvre, much of her work is a reference to her dogs — subverting society’s expectations of what is a worthy subject of fine art.

Stine’s color schemes come from looking at photographs, flowers, skies, dogs, hummingbirds, rainbows, postcards and more. Much of her color work references the digital — pulling colors one would see on a pantone color chart. We also see references to rainbows and prisms in much of Stine’s work, as she explores color in her own environment. Stine’s exterior sees an oversupply of rainbows in the New Mexico sky. Her interior also sees a kaleidoscope of color in the prisms she hangs around her house. The movement of her paintings are inspired by sensual experiences like sniffing, kissing, and crying. The background and foreground of her work could be two separate and beautiful paintings — but Stine’s choice to layer her works bring together a variety of different narratives and colors that entice the human eye.

While Stine does work in color, she also works in form. Against these gradient backgrounds, Stine places flowers that fool us into believing they are collage. Stine has purposefully painted them as a realistic collage, adding dimension to her canvas. Her work is a trompe l'oeil — fooling us into believing there are real raindrops on the canvas. Paired with these realistic images, Stine produces thick swashes of paint, that sit upon the canvas. The combination of all these elements creates a cosmos in and of itself in each of Stine’s paintings, as we are given a new world of color and movement for our delight.  

Raychael Stine has a BA from UT Dallas and an MFA from U of I Chicago. The artist lives in Albuquerque New Mexico in the North Valley along the river, with her dogs Mouse and Petunia. Stine is Associate professor of painting and drawing at the University of New Mexico. Select exhibitions include Five Car Garage, LA; Eugene Binder, Marfa; Art Palace, Houston; L.A. Louver, Venice, CA; Rhona Hoffman, Chicago; Smoke the Moon, Santa Fe, 1969 Gallery NYC and others. Her work has been included in shows like NADA NY, NEXT Art Chicago, and Art on Paper NY. Stine’s work has been featured in New American Paintings Issues #132, #120 #78, and in Hyperallergic, New City Chicago, Texas Arts + Culture, Glasstire, NY Arts, Southwest Contemporary among others. Awards and residencies include Bemis Center, 100 West Corsicana, Jentel, The Dallas Museum of Art DeGoyler Grant, and 3-time Joan Mitchell Award nomination. Recently, Stine has been an Artist in Residence at Headlands Center for the Arts and Millay Arts.