rachaelbacon@rocketmail.com
Rachael Bacon

British artist, born 1977 - Whitby, North Yorkshire. UK.

Rachael is a British artist living and working in Whitby, North Yorkshire. Surrounded by sea, ancient woodland and moorland, these landscapes provide an enduring source for her painting, drawing and printmaking.
She graduated from Leeds University with a BA (Hons) Fine Art in 2001 and was awarded a Queen Elizabeth Scholarship for intaglio printmaking in 2006. In 2024 she completed the Turps Banana Postgraduate Programme in Painting.
Alongside her studio practice, Rachael co-founded Loftus Arts CIO in 2021, helping develop it from a derelict church into artist studios, gallery and projects space until early 2026. Later in 2026 she established Sylvan Gallery in Whitby, where she curates exhibitions alongside maintaining her own painting practice.
Her work has been selected for the Jackson’s Painting Prize, Women in Art Prize and Blue Shop Cottage Works on Paper exhibition.
Working primarily in oil, Rachael builds paintings through layers of richly saturated colour. Her work explores nature, perception and time, drawing on fleeting experiences of landscape, light, movement and atmosphere. Influences include Harald Sohlberg, Edvard Munch, Edward Hopper, Howard Hodgkin and Sidney Nolan.

Statement

My paintings, explore nature, perception and time, responding to intangible moments that are difficult to express in words.
Living on the North Yorkshire coast, I am surrounded by sea, woodland and moorland. With my converted travelling studio I paint directly from the land both across the North Yorkshire area and further -to the lakes, the Highlands, Outer Hebrides and the South Coast.
It is often in wild places that a sense of wonder emerges. Looking down from a summit across an atlas of form and space, over a constellation of reflections from a boat. These experiences form the starting point of my paintings.
I am interested in paintings that leave something unresolved, inviting the viewer to enter the work and form their own experience. I hope the paintings create a space to pause and reconnect with the wonder and mystery of the natural world with somthing felt rather than explained.