Meet Featured Artist Jessie Rasche. I think you will find her work as fresh, inspiring and real as I do.
Jessie – What inspires you?
What inspires me? That’s a great question. I have had the need to make art for a long time. I went to art school at 18 (and loved it). I loved drawing and painting pretty much anything, but figures especially. Moms and babies bonding, portraits, figures outside, birds and cows. Colors and light and emotion are the first things that catch my eye in a scene or figure and make me want to paint it. And I hope that what excites me in a scene will be conveyed in my paintings and will connect with people.
As for who inspires me, I have had great teachers. At PNCA the (now) late print maker Gordon Gilkey was my mentor and was incredibly inspiring, and I adored him and his passion for prints. He had a great collection of prints as well as riveting stories about how they had been obtained. He let me hold an original Picasso print on one of our adventures perusing his collection. He handed the print to me and at one glance I knew what it was…I remember the sensation of holding something so special.
My first profoundly inspiring museum exhibit was a Monet exhibit in 1990. I had seen Monet lily pads in books, but in person it was a completely different experience. His water was so deep and lush I felt like I could just sink in and live in the painting. That’s when I knew what affect a great painting could have on a viewer. What the real goal of painting is, for me at least.
Paintings that I get the most excited about are the ones where you see but you don’t see. Where the draftsmanship is perfect, but there is an abstract quality to the painting and the subject is almost hidden. Hopefully you will see some of that quality in my paintings. That’s the direction my art is going – more accurate and more abstract. I am driven by a need to improve. To see more accurately, to make my brush strokes more meaningful.
