Kansas City, MO ARTIST STATEMENTWorking in traditional paint media such as oil paint, gouache, and chalk pastel, artist Rachel Gregor (b. 1990) creates psychological portraits of young girls that tip-toe between realism and artificiality. Caught in a single moment between the mundane and the melodramatic, the figures are wide-eyed and wistful, frozen in a state somewhere between boredom and shock. In her latest body of work, the girls portrayed are encircled by their surroundings, usually backed up against a fence or isolated on a dock. The viewer stays trapped with the girls, as the expansive landscapes are often visually obstructed by a tree branch or the figure herself, preventing any visual wandering through the pictorial space. Botanical motifs are a common theme throughout Gregor’s visual lexicon, a nod to her upbringing of her family owning their own horticulture nursery, as well as being a broader symbol of fragility and resilience. BIOGRAPHYGregor lives and works in Kansas City, MO. She graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2012 and has studied abroad at Studio Art Centers International in Florence, Italy. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally with solo shows in New York, Los Angeles, and Zürich, Switzerland, and group exhibition participation nationwide. Her work has been featured in print publications such as New American Paintings (issue #161) and Create Magazine (issue #10, issue #25) as well as online at BOOOOOOOM (03/05/2018) the Jealous Curator (1/11/2021). She was born and raised in Minnesota.