Piece description from the artist
At Middlebury College my junior year, I lived in the oldest extent college dormitory in the country. It was drafty but nice. Beth grew right outside and I walked past her every day. As a painting, Beth has been shown at Middlebury and in Columbia’s undergraduate journal for Eastern European and Slavic Studies. Deeply important to New England and Eastern Europe, birch trees are said to bring luck.
Beth scared me and captivated me one day on campus when my vision was especially vivid. She came at me from the other angle, leaning down over me (as she is a leaning tree) sometime in Late January or Early February. When I photographed her in March as the catkins were blooming, I noticed her grander dancing nature from behind; it is this view, towering and dancing, playful and unnerving, that I painted here.
Rachel Aurora received her B.A. in Studio Art and Environmental Studies from Middlebury College (2018) and currently lives and works in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her debut solo exhibition, “A Second Look: Pinecones and Birch through Portraiture” opened in her hometown of Claremont, NH in April 2019 in the John D. Bennett Atrium Gallery of the Claremont Opera House. Her paintings have also been featured in the 26th Annual Student Show of the Copley Society of Art, Boston, MA and the Intercollegiate Regional of the The Arts Center of the Capital Region, Troy NY.
While at Middlebury, her work was published in The Birch at Columbia University and in Blackbird Student Magazine at Middlebury College. She conducted several group exhibitions at Middlebury on topics ranging from feminism and science to human ecology.
She has an avid interest in food systems reform, ecological justice and healing, and regenerative agriculture.
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