Visual Art and Dyes
Artist Statement
Raine creates with joy, curiosity, and delight. Drawing, watercolour painting, print making, music-making, basket weaving, and sewing are tools within an arm’s reach.
Drawn to the land in a profound way, in their music career, Raine has created a body of work that honours, respects and celebrates the land, from the east coast of this continent to the west, with long stops in the prairies and mountains. Their visual work follows suit. Plant and earth dyes, natural fibres and natural pigment watercolours are central to Raine’s work, which resonates like a chord connecting their heart to the land.
Queer identity is also celebrated in Raine’s musical and visual work.
Mediums
Plant dyes on natural fibres. Indigo, marigold, madder, onion skin, avocado, tea, mushrooms. Immersion dyeing, bundle dyeing, eco printing.
Pattern-making. Block printing and screen printing with plant dyes on natural fibre cloth and on paper.
Sewn items made with plant-dyed fabrics. Pouches, paint brush stands/cases, bandanas, patches
Paint making. Plant dyes converted into lake pigments, bound into watercolour paints
Painting and drawing. Sometimes representational, sometimes abstract and ethereal. It’s often about the plants, the earth source of the colour.
About the Work
Hello! Raine here :) More and more in recent years I have been drawn to create visual work. This is both new and not new. It is new in that I am less practiced at this art, and it is old in that it has been waiting patiently for attention as I pursued music head on for several decades.
It is a gift, I believe, to show up as we are, so that’s what I am doing. When parts of me knock, I answer and delight in them. In this case I have put in hundreds of hours drawing, painting, dyeing, planting, and studying.
The process of visual creation is a very cool unveiling. It’s true what they say, that learning to draw is learning to see. I see in technocolour now, and in techno-shape. The entire process of dirt to plant to dye to pigment and then to finished work is humbling and thrilling.
The whole process of creation from soil to seed to paint to frame, or to sewing machine top-stitching - all of it is important. In the artistic sense, I consider all of the steps to be my work.
My main goal is to create, and I tend to do that on a pretty large scale. I make so many things that I am able to offer them for sale at craft sales, concerts, and events.
Items for sale
Handmade watercolour paint
Watercolour kit
Original watercolour paintings
Paintbrush case/stand
Other sewn items: pouches patches, bandanas, scarves
Workshops