Sold at Auction: Raine Bedsole

Born in Mobile, Alabama, Raine Bedsole spent much of her childhood on a farm. Her earliest experiences inspired a lifelong interest in nature’s forms and textures and continue to influence themes in her art. She received a Bachelor of Fine Art from Auburn University and a Masters of Fine Art from the San Francisco Art Institute. Returning to the south, Bedsole settled in New Orleans twenty years ago. Recent recognition includes feature footage of her work in the final two Twilight movies and grants for public art from the Joan Mitchell Foundation and the Jefferson Parish Public Art Initiative. Bedsole’s work is included in the collections of the New Orleans Museum of Art and the South Carolina Museum of Art, as well as many other public and private collections both nationally and internationally. She is represented by Callan Contemporary in New Orleans and Cumberland Gallery in Nashville.

Evocative, haunting and serene, Raine Bedsole's art whispers in the timeless language of mythology and symbolism. Nautical imagery that informs the artist's work harkens to the Egyptian barques that ferried souls into the afterlife; Norse longboats embodied with poignancy and romance; Native American canoes; and the raft – that rescues us from harm, delivers us to safety.
The boats, oars, bird’s wings and other recurring motifs are expressed in a language not limited to earthly tongues and time periods. With poeticism and concentrated emotional potency, Raine Bedsole’s sculptures and works on paper speak directly to the human heart. They elicit the phenomenon of memory and the dynamic between the objects and experiences – those that anchor us to our past and those that liberate us to let go. The notches and grooves in Bedsole's oars sculptures weave mysterious narratives about the hands that rowed them – their individual histories mixing with the artist's experience in intricate layers of paint, texture, fabric, found paper and poetry.
Whether collage or assemblage, painting or sculpture, the works have luscious patinas and textures embodied with meaning. Incorporating materials and found objects that allude to the personal narratives that shape our lives, Bedsole marries material virtuosity with an uncommon sensitivity to myth and the power of natural form.