Rachel Strickland

About Rachel

Explore the vision and life behind bold figurative portraits celebrating complex, resilient feminine identities.

About

Bold Portraits of Female Power

Rachel Strickland is a contemporary portrait artist exploring the tension between vulnerability and resolve in women’s lives, where soft curves meet sharp geometry to honor stories of resilience, identity, and quiet, unshakable strength.

Artist statement
A dramatic close-up of a textured canvas leaning against a matte charcoal wall, featuring bold, abstract geometric shapes that suggest a female portrait without depicting a person. Hard angular blocks of deep indigo and vermilion intersect with soft, sweeping arcs of blush and ivory, the paint visibly thick and tactile. Shot in photographic realism at eye level, the studio floor is polished concrete, slightly blurred, with scattered charcoal sticks and paint tubes out of focus in the foreground. A single high side window casts strong, directional afternoon light, carving sharp shadows along the canvas edges and emphasizing the contrast between soft curves and hard corners. The mood is confident and powerful, with a minimal, gallery-like atmosphere and a shallow depth of field that keeps the artwork as the undeniable focal point.
A large, square, monochrome painting dominates a clean white gallery wall, depicting a stylized, faceted silhouette that evokes feminine strength through intersecting planes and curved voids, without showing an actual human form. The surface is a mix of glossy jet-black enamel and matte dove-gray acrylic, catching the light differently across its planes. Photographic realism captures the gleam of a polished concrete floor reflecting the artwork’s dark geometry. Overhead track lighting creates crisp, angular highlights and deep shadows, reinforcing the theme of soft curves meeting hard edges. Shot from a slightly low, wide-angle perspective, the composition uses strong leading lines from the floor and ceiling to draw the eye to the piece. The atmosphere is bold, high-end, and contemporary, suitable as a hero image for a portfolio site.
A minimalist studio corner in photographic realism, featuring a large unfinished canvas on an industrial steel easel. The composition on the canvas is a stark, graphic design of interlocking curved and angular shapes in saturated crimson, burnt orange, and pale nude tones, clearly referencing the planes of a face and shoulders without depicting any human features. Around the easel, taped to the white wall, are small color studies and paper cutouts of sharp triangles and smooth ovals. A concrete floor shows splatters of similar hues. Strong, directional golden-hour light streams through an unseen window to the right, skimming across the canvas texture and casting crisp geometric shadows from the easel. Shot at a three-quarter angle with a slightly wide lens, the scene feels raw, bold, and in-progress, capturing the energy of contemporary figurative experimentation.
An orderly arrangement of artist’s tools lies on a blackened wooden worktable in photographic realism, each item hinting at bold contemporary portraiture without any figures present. There are chunky graphite blocks, precision metal rulers, matte-black palette knives with dried umber and crimson paint, and a sketchbook open to an angular, faceless contour suggesting a head and shoulders made entirely of intersecting curves and corners. A ceramic pot holds stiff, square-tipped brushes with paint-stained handles. Late-morning window light enters from the left, creating long, confident shadows and bright, crisp highlights on the metal edges. The background fades into soft blur, revealing only a hint of stretched canvases stacked upright. Shot from a slightly elevated angle with a moderate depth of field, the mood is focused, bold, and intensely creative, emphasizing process and craft over the human subject.