Rachel Budde at Breeze Block Gallery, Portland OR

I have to confess, I love New York artist Rachel Budde's ever-darkening skies. It's a shame I don't have links to older work, but she's always had an edge. Historically (deceptively) sweet, her protagonists echoed a time when Diane Arbus was king and carnivals held us in a mystified spell. They were almost welcoming, save for knives hidden under their skirts and dark piercing eyes.

Budde's work has always rooted itself in street art, taking notes from Margaret Kilgallen, Barry McGee, and Swoon. Like much of the street art she references, she's creating a new world alongside or on top of the old one and with it, a history. These days, her work is separating itself from the street and its cleanly pinstriped inhabitants to explode into a full fledged universe of beautiful and terrifying creatures, [un]sacred myths, and parables. And that universe is literally pouring out of the bodies of her newest creatures, currently in mid-shift from pro- to an-tagonistic positions. They dance wildly like incomprehesibly gigantic, galactic Baba Yagas or Muma Păduriis; heads detached, too many eyes, hands waving, wielding cumbersome obelisks for phalluses. Their spell is less about mystifying us, and more about upending our comfortable interpretation of myth and symbolism. These stories are present in our everyday lives -- after all, we've created them. But over time, we lose our connection as we forget what they mean. Rachel Budde, should her creatures emerge from the hidden world to the one we occupy, will show us the way back to them.

We need richness in our inner mythology so that the soul, or psyche, doesn’t get caught in stereotypes and miss the deeper archetypal presences. We need plural images and textured stories because the soul is plural, and many images can capture its multiple transformations and metamorphoses. Rather than blazing goodness facing off against unspeakable evil, we need flawed heroes and complex villians worthy of redemption.

–Dr. Stephen Larsen, The Fundamentalist Mind, 2007. pp. 84-85.

-- quote borrowed from Emily Pothast, Where Have All the Tricksters Gone?, because she is one hell of an authority on art and spiritualism/mythology

Rachel Budde will be showing her work during Portland's First Thursday art walk, 7 August at Breeze Block Gallery.

Rachel Budde, Eagle/Pigeon 2007
12" x 15" gouache and ink on paper

Rachel Budde, Severed Cosmos 2009
from the infinite manifestation series. 4" x 5" gouache on paper

Breeze Block Gallery, Portland OR