REBECCA GABRIEL | Femininity in the hand of a master’s brush | AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

REBECCA GABRIEL | Femininity in the hand of a master’s brush

Rebecca Gabriel is a USA realist artist. She holds an MFA from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and has also studied in Europe through Naropa University in Denver, CO. She was a featured artist and interviewed by Jasmine Sukary for the International Art Market Magazine Issue #46, April 2020. Gabriel participated in the Florence Biennale Xll. She has exhibited at the Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, OR; Denver Art Museum, CO; De Cordova Museum, MA; Oakland Museum, CA; Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Cornell University, NY.
In addition, a one-person retrospective was held at the Rogue Gallery and Art Center in Medford, Oregon.
Her work has received numerous awards, including the First Award, Henry Hopkins, “All California Art Exhibition”; Finalist in Artist’s Magazine; and Jurors Choice award in the “Human Form” exhibit, Newport Visual Art Center, OR.
Gabriel’s work was selected for an extended loan in the Executive Chairman’s office at the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C. She is represented by Gallerie Karon, in Ashland, Oregon, as well as Verum Ultimum Art Gallery, in Portland, Oregon.
Rebecca Gabriel’s published monograph, Woman’s Journey
– A Life in Painting, received critical acclaim.
Dr. Jean Houston asserts, “Rebecca Gabriel gives us potent insight…into the artist at critical times.”
Art critic Robert C. Morgan writes,
“Her ingenuity in perceiving her subjects…depends on an ability to understand painting as a language.”

Rebecca Gabriel has been awarded a University of Massachusetts Fellowship in Art and a Haines Foundation Grant. Her work is featured in several Art Market International Magazines, Calyx, Studio Visit, American Artwork, and World of Art MOMA Issue magazines. In addition, Gabriel is represented in the Israeli Art Market Group Exhibition 2020 and 2021 and a featured artist in the recent national juried exhibition, “PORTRAYED,” at the d’Art Center in Norfolk, Virginia, USA.

“In my work, I flow from process to process, as they unfold in a criss-cross of approaches. I always begin with the direct observational portrait, executed in traditional mediums: egg tempera and oil on canvas; or pastel, pencil, or charcoal on paper. Though these pieces stand alone as finished works, they also contain other potential dimensions, interpretations, and implied stories.
Thus, one approach is to literally open up the portrait’s surface- like an expressive X-ray – to peel away external appearances and reveal interior realities. Another approach is to employ new media prints of my portraits. I cut these out and use them as the fulcrum element in collages. For these, I employ original high flow paint surfaces or origami and suminagashi papers. I then rework the collages with paint and pastel for cohesiveness, clarity, and impact.
Sometimes I take a “finished” collage and manipulate it digitally.

Some, I rework again with traditional media – always attuned and in tandem with my muse.
These experiments offer varied and more profound possibilities, like Russian dolls emerging, each nestled and given birth to by its predecessor…
John Keats famously wrote, “Truth is beauty and beauty is truth…” and I have been in search of both simultaneously. My belief is that we are all sharing an innate spectrum of emotion. My hope is that these portraits resonate with our connection and perhaps bring insight and recognition to our human predicament.” – Rebecca Gabriel

www.rebeccagabriel.com | Facebook: @Rebecca Gabriel | Instagram: @rgabrielartist |
Art Market Magazine: rebecca-gabriel

Read the full article in the Gold List Special Edition #6