Rachael (Ray Ray) Rausch

www.RayRayRausch.com

My Story

I have been an artist since the moment that I stepped into awareness as a young child. My first memories include myself drawing from life. My nickname was "Weird".

I began taking adult life drawing classes at the age of eleven. I was the only child in the class. The instructor had arranged a still life with a marble sculpture of a female figure with some drapery and a light source for us to draw from and something that can only be described as pure passion awoke in my little soul. 

I became obsessed with drawing from life and looking for the very meaning of existence while practicing observation and recording my renderings. I would beg my two sisters to model for me!  I attended a fine arts school for seven years called The Center for the Arts and Sciences in Saginaw, Michigan, right outside of my hometown Detroit. Upon graduation, I was accepted into The School of the Art Institute of Chicago to pursue my BFA. I opted out to join The Palette & Chisel Painter's Guild on Chicago's Gold Coast; I was their youngest member ever to be accepted into the guild at that time. It was an honor to be there. 

I returned to Detroit a few years later and started taking classes at Wayne State University. I decided to discontinue my formal studies to practice large scale street art with a small group of other Detroit-based artists. We called ourselves the Dead House Painters. We were part of the early revitalization of the city. In order to continue to develop as an artist I decided to pack a bag and travel the world and look for gems to bring back home. 

I am still traveling and creating every single day but I always return home to my favorite city, Detroit.

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My art represents my journey, my experience. It represents the animism of all things, both perceived living and not. It all lives. Everything is sentient and connected by an invisible thread of energy. That energy is God and God is a state of mind, a way of looking at the world through the eyes of pure and unconditional love. I am love. I practice love. My art represents love. It represents the stories of the people and the things that I cross paths with and silently receive visions through when I align myself to the frequency resonance of the encounter as a whole.

My art is a vehicle for the tales of my ancestors to travel through perceived time with. It is my torch passed to me from my mother from hers and so on and inward forever. It is my opportunity to simply document 'what is' as plain and mundane as it may seem. I am here and now.