Leah Rainey Raking Light

“Raking Light” is a technique in which a surface is illuminated from an oblique angle to help reveal texture and detail not visible with direct light. This is the angle of light commonly illuminating a particular wall in my studio. This exhibition of work is an expanded collection of paintings from “In Low Light” an online exhibition hosted by Elissa Cristall Gallery in May of this year.

These recent paintings and works on paper explore combining and reconfiguring earlier work in new ways. The initial compositions were complex amalgamations gradually refined towards a more minimalist aesthetic. Using thin layers of vivid colour, the vibrant surfaces of the paintings are darkened to varying degrees evoking illusions of three dimensions and a sense of depth. Inspired by how the work was hung within the studio during the process of preparing for the show (their proximity)- several works are painted with the illusion that they’re made of two separate panels butted together when they are actually one. Playing with the idea that the composition is also a painting of the painting.

Colour, line and shape partially emerge, inviting the mind to fill in the spaces. The contrast of colour and gradual darkness draws the viewer into a surface that is made of subtle lines and refined marks, suggesting a topography no longer made of paint but a delicate textile cast in fading light- Raking Light.

Bio

Leah Rainey is a Toronto based painter who works within a combined tradition of process painting and direct painting. Often experimenting with found or unconventional tools and using a broad range of techniques, she is interested in how elements within painting interconnect through coincidence, suggestion and the accidental.

Her work explores the elusive ground between the physical presence of the painted surface and latent memories, association and thought. Distilled abstract or semi-abstract compositions evolve through many iterations. Working with a reductive process of editing to explore the visual space around and between things, Rainey observes and reveals that which is often overlooked; what we unconsciously register. Her paintings celebrate a world outside of any recognizable narrative while hinting at the familiar.

Leah Rainey grew up surrounded by nature in rural Ontario. She attended Loughborough College of Art and Design and received her BA Honours in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art and Design in London. Her work is in the public collections of Christ College, Cambridge and the Sheffield City Council UK, and private collections in North America. Rainey lives and works in Toronto, Canada.