Rachel Lancaster's practice is focused on painting and its intersections with the languages of cinema, music and photography. Photographic ‘stills’ from found moving imagery, alongside an archive of her own photographs are selected from, edited and then translated into oil paintings. Lancaster's paintings represent detailed fragments of a greater narrative. She is drawn to seemingly insignificant passing shots, extreme close ups of inanimate objects, common place domestic interiors; the split second moments that are “in-between” the action. Divorced physically from their position within a narrative structure, these paintings become abstract, ambiguous and open ended as to the unknown events which have preceded or may follow.
The process of remaking these images in paint is used to draw out the uncanny and the potential psychological charge within source imagery. The paintings are made by applying successive thin glazes of translucent oil paint, many layers of colour and texture accrue over time. This technique encourages a dichotomy of definition and abstraction. The surface of the paint creates an array of optical effects; the anticipated details within the surface of the paint often give way to loose and minimal rendering on closer inspection by the viewer. Cropping, colour and mark making are manipulated in order to play upon the latent 'otherness' and dreamlike qualities often found in cinema and how this can be reflected in painting.
Rachel Lancaster (b.1979, Hartlepool, UK) lives and works in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. She completed her MFA in Fine Art at Newcastle University in 2011 and her BA in Fine Art at Northumbria University in 2001.
Selected solo exhibitions include From Another Room, The Shophouse, Hong Kong, Hong Kong (2024); Beep Painting Prize Exhibition, Elysium Gallery, Swansea, UK
(2024); and In The Wake, Workplace, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK (2023). Selected duo and group exhibitions include: Remember, Somewhere: Rachel Lancaster and Laura Lancaster, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK (2025); Pictures of You, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, Ireland (2025); Paggi House, Austin Texas, US (2025); Episode II: Home and Away, Matt Carey-Williams Gallery 2, Seoul, South Korea (2024); Soft Focus, Bradley Ertaskiran, Montreal, Canada (2024); Gentle Again, The Shophouse, Hong Kong (2024); The Blue Hour, Workplace, London, UK (2023); Cadence, Workplace, London, UK (2023); Vitalistic Fantasies, Elysium Gallery, Swansea, UK (2023); Without Borders, Art Spot Korin, Kyoto, Japan; Venice, Italy; Norway and US (2022); Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2020, Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK (2020); and Omnia Mea Mecum Porto, Kotti - Shop, Berlin, Germany (2012).
Lancaster is the recipient of Ares Mosaic Art Prize, BEEP Painting Prize, and was shortlisted for the Contemporary British Painting Prize. She was Artist-in-Residence at Alewive Brook Road in New York, the former residence and studio of Elaine De Kooning.
Lancaster’s work is in institutional collections including X Museum, Beijing, China, The Government Art Collection, UK and Middlesborough Institute for Modern Art, Middlesborough, UK. Her work is held in multiple private collections.
