Rachel Stanley
Painter
Rachel Stanley is a painter whose practice speculates on the possibilities between abstraction and figuration. Taking reference from natural forms and the human body, the paintings perform a shifting of perspectives – looking across, over, under and through – in order to obscure and undo the landscape. Bringing sentience to otherwise static forms, the works exist in a grey ‘between’ area, suggesting double meanings and requiring multiple visits.
Asleep, 2021
Oil on canvas
“It’s unusual for me to paint figuratively, but I regularly go back to this painting from 2021. I may not have been able to articulate it at the time, but it is undeniably a self-portrait on neurodivergence. It’s about feeling small and being unable to take up space. It’s about befriending the moon and having to sleep with the light on. It’s about those moments of willful isolation, of gentle unmasking, of saving a place for someone who needs it too.”
Stanley’s works employ a playful consideration of materiality and surface, often utilising burlap, wood, or found objects in place of canvas, and painting in varying degrees of thickness – gently staining, thickly layering, and using gestural mark-making more akin to drawing. This is an intuitive and sensory process, whereby paintings reveal themselves over time.
Film photographs from the artist of the work being created in studio, 2021
About Rachel Stanley
Rachel Stanley is a painter based in Edinburgh, UK. Recent exhibitions include The Land, The Dick Institute (Kilmarnock, 2025), Art and Neurodiversity, Sotheby’s (London, 2024), Word of Mouth, Scottish Storytelling Centre (Edinburgh, 2024), An Elastic Continuum, S1 Artspace (Sheffield, 2023), At The Edge of Everything, Cabin (Berlin, 2023), Separate Ways Together, Wondering People (London, 2022) and Cruel Intentions, Arusha Gallery (London, 2021). Stanley was shortlisted for the 2023-24 Gilchrist Fisher Award and was a recipient of the Creative Scotland VACMA award in 2024 and 2025. She undertook a WASPS residency in Shetland in 2024, and is founder and host of Listening Party, a community for artists and makers in Edinburgh.
Find out more about In Tension and see exhibiting pages from other artists