LOS ANGELES, CA.- Tierra Del Sol Gallery is presenting The Evolution of Helen Rae featuring 15 works that represent the ongoing development of Rae’s studio practice and confirms her status as an iconic contemporary artist.
Helen Rae was over 50 years old when she joined the Tierra Del Sol Studio, a program which fosters creativity for the disabled, and 76 years old when she had her first solo show in 2015 at The Good Luck Gallery, which was founded by Paige Wery. Now director of the Tierra Del Sol Gallery, Wery is instrumental in putting Helen on the international map of galleries, collectors and museums.
In an arc that has included ceramic masks, sculpture and watercolor, Rae is now known for her vibrant, highly patterned, color dense pencil and graphite drawings inspired from couture magazines. In The Evolution of Helen Rae, she continues with her muse, yet focuses on portraiture and on the faces of women she does not know but brings to life with complexity and intimacy, using line, form and color to reveal a range of emotions.
The subjects of Rae’s new work express the tensions and the pleasures of this moment. These women are pensive, somber, stoic, resolute and all Helen’s in their rendering. She has elongated their heads, widened their faces, illuminated their eyes and contextualized them inside color fields that give the viewer a glimpse into Rae’s thinking and her growth as an artist.
The Evolution of Helen Rae is both a surprise and evidence of her impulse to push the boundaries of how she sees, interprets and communicates her distinct and expanding aesthetic language. The exhibition marks another milestone in a prolific career that breaks boundaries of labels and categories in the art world and beyond.
Located at 945 Chung King Road in the Chinatown Arts District, the exhibition runs through October 23 and is open by appointment only.
Born in 1938, Helen Rae has been creating art since 1990 when she first joined the progressive art studios of the Tierra del Sol Foundation in Upland, California.
Her drawings, in colored pencil and graphite, are immediately striking for their vivid imagery, resonant use of color and innovative reworking of source material. Using fashion magazines as a point of departure for otherworldly journeys into the subconscious, Helen transforms the original images into something uniquely expressive, which possess a strange beauty and power.
Helen had her first solo exhibition at The Good Luck Gallery in 2015 and in 2017 received her first New York solo exhibition at White Columns. Helen’s work has been included in numerous group exhibitions and she has received features in Art Forum, Vogue, and The Los Angeles Times among many other publications.
