Rachel Holsonback is a figurative oil painter currently living in Florida. Her work investigates dynamics of human connection within lived and constructed environments. Working from both direct observation and personal photographs, her work examines the way transient, often quiet encounters become sites of emotional resonance. The scenes she depicts are rooted in personal experience, yet rendered with a degree of openness, offering viewers a space in which to locate their own memories.

At the heart of Holsonback’s work is an engagement with the materiality of paint. Embracing the medium’s inherent instability—its capacity for spontaneity, erasure, and transformation—she uses texture, abstraction, and a considered use of color to distill an initial moment into something more elusive and evocative. Her recent work depicts the relationships with those closest to her- her partner, friends, and the non-human companions that structure her daily life. Her practice seeks to articulate a poetics of care—one that acknowledges the interdependencies that sustains all life.

    Through an emphasis on tenderness, play, and attention, these works highlight the subtle moments of communion that shape our sense of belonging. In doing so, they propose painting as a site for holding the relational, where image becomes not just a record of experience, but a living container for memory, emotion, and transformation.