Gallery With A Cause • Located in the New Mexico Cancer Center • Benefitting the NMCC Foundation
Please call gallery director Regina Held to arrange a private gallery tour, make a purchase, or ask any questions.
Biography
Marcia Rackstraw is originally from Palo Alto in the San Francisco Bay Area where she studied art at The Academy of Art and The San Francisco Art Institute. She earned an Associate of Arts degree at Pierce College and a BFA in 1983 and an MA in 1985 from the University of New Mexico. She began a career as an advertising designer for a small publishing company in Albuquerque, eventually becoming Art Director, the job from which she retired in 2014. She also freelanced as designer and book illustrator.
Rackstraw has maintained an art studio in Placitas since 1985, working in charcoal and oil paint with experience in printmaking in the form of linocuts. Her work is in collections in Hawaii, California, Oregon, Texas and Pennsylvania as well as New Mexico.
Artist Statement
Over the years my work has been inspired by annual visits to the island of Kauai, a landscape dramatically different from the high desert of Placitas. There I have made many trips to Limahuli Garden and Preserve, a botanical park dedicated to preserving species native to Hawaii, to study the brilliantly lush vegetation. From this I created small landscapes of the more intimate spaces, a close-up of the plants and water, the patterns of shadows and light reflections.
Using that observation of nature as a starting point, my images have become a patchwork of “rooms” filled with exotic objects on planes of color that emphasize the flat surface of the canvas. The perspective of each space shifts so the viewer is at once in front of, above or below as the objects push off the surface and into the viewer’s space.
The intention is to present the viewer with an unknown space, one that can promote a quiet contemplation, perhaps a mystery to be solved or a challenge to know what is being shared. I like the play between what is realistic and what is fanciful — the riotous colors and the curious shapes given to plant life. I, too, pause to allow the painting to evolve in a way that tells me where it is headed, what new elements will complete the story.
