Rebekah Callaghan

Philadelphia-based artist Rebekah Callaghan paints flowers and foliage, but her subject matter is color, light and the passage of time. Painting from gardens and plants, these recognizable elements are reduced to their most skeletal forms enmeshed with bright bursts of patterning and muted tones of suggested shadows. 

Made with many layers of paint, each responding to the layer before, the work calls to the complexity of change and the beauty of transformation. These layered, lustrous botanical compositions ask the viewer to look closely and carefully, bringing attention to both the act of painting and the joy of looking.

In the artist’s words, the best discoveries emerge when she replaces assurance and habits with questions and reflection. Heavily observational approaches are swapped for a deeper immersion in the paintings’ structure, allowing space for reaction and time for sentiment. More often than not, this means reworking layers, reinventing space, and making room for spontaneity until the paintings eventually surfaced. Some of the paintings are filled with commotion, others with peace. They’re the evidence of the artist’s search for unknown spaces, of leaning in to letting go, and realizing the gift of being there for it.