Rachel Caldwell

Rachel Caldwell is a painter and illustrator based in Pennsylvania, USA. The daughter of a realism painter, she grew up sculpting animals out of snow in the freezing mountains of Northern New Hampshire. She earned a B.F.A. in Communication Design from Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, where her studies included Drawing, Printmaking, and Graphic Design. Caldwell’s goal is to achieve a visual experience that is beautiful and serene with clean lines and movement, featuring the strange, surreal, or dreamlike. Commingling zombies and butterflies may not be your everyday scenario, but it’s a good example of the way Caldwell oftentimes straddles the dark with the light. She is naturally drawn to the complex line work involved in creating flowing hair, graffiti, or exposed muscles, and hopes the viewer finds a combination of amusement and an appreciation for beauty in her concepts and subject matter.
“My goal is to achieve a visual experience that is beautiful and serene with clean lines and movement, but that also contains elements of the strange, surreal, or dreamlike. I want to create images that take elements from real life and combine them with unexpected surprises such as replacing owl feathers with ligatures/swashes. If there is an opportunity to exaggerate, I love that, too. I’m drawn to the complex line work involved in creating flowing hair, graffiti, or exposed muscles. I hope my viewer finds a combination of beauty and amusement in my concepts and subject matter.”