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Expressionist painter Rachel Mercer explores her sensual experience of the world. She paints to capture the movement and actions of people in their dealings with space and each other, examining physical and emotional connections through dynamic portraits and contorted compositions.

Rachel Mercer’s Early Career and Style

Born in Cambridgeshire, Rachel studied at Cardiff School of Art and Design and The Royal Drawing School. Since 2014, she has pursued her painting career from her studio in London. People and places are a recurring theme in Rachel's paintings. At the centre of her approach is an interest in human interaction and the importance of the observed world. Mercer captures a sense of movement, fluidity, and haptic beauty in the way the figures move and dissolve across the canvas. Recent oil paintings and watercolours show London life. Mercer makes sketches from observation, and these drawings are then supplemented by imagination and rendered as sometimes large-scale layered paintings.The painted surface is layered with multiple re-workings, scraped and scratched in an attempt to find the image on the canvas.

Exhibitions

Stand-out exhibitions include Christie's London in 2013, Mandell's Gallery in 2018, San Mei Gallery in 2019, and Carousel Gallery and Coventry Cathedral in 2020. Her paintings have also been exhibited at Fitzrovia Gallery in 2022 and Aleph Contemporary in 2023. Her works were shortlisted for the Ruth Borchard Prize 2020, Waverton Art prize 2022 and prize winner of the Hampstead Art Society prize 2022 and 2023. She has exhibited in the Green&Stone and NEAC open exhibitions 2023 and 2024. The Royal Collection by HM The Prince of Wales has purchased some of her work.