Rachel Milne

7 In approaching this incursion into other people’s lounge rooms, kitchens and fridges, she refers to the late great David Bowie that when embarking on creative projects, ‘you always have to be a bit scared and you should never get complacent’. Milne laments, ‘I’ll fear more than anything becoming somebody that paints the same thing...’ 4 For the artist, painting En plein air has also resulted in dynamically paced works such as Bar Beach and Thursday Storm Bar Beach . Both painted in a two-hour period as a storm rolled in, Milne frantically captures the blowback, wind shifts and rolling clouds hitting Newcastle’s coastline. Staccato brush strokes are an evocative barometer of the changing environment and the energy required to complete the image — before rain renders the surface unsalvageable. She describes this challenge and of knowing when to stop, ‘that you have to be so careful that you don’t lose that power that you’ve got, that’s what the image was at that time and you have to leave it’. 5 Milne’s painting technique is driven by a perfectionism she describes as ‘more about the process, the pushing forward and challenging myself. Once a painting is complete it almost becomes obsolete, it’s like I never painted it’. 6 Rachel Milne’s paintings are about life — yet rely on the absence of the body in order to achieve this. These evocatively rendered works demonstrate the artist’s constant push towards perfection, in presenting the familiar yet uncanny elements of real life. Sarah Johnson Curator, Newcastle Art Gallery July 2019 Knifed bun 2019 oil on board 45 x 40 cm 1 Margit Rowell, ‘Allegories of Life and Death: Tradition revisited and transformed’ in Objects of Desire: The Modern Still Life, exhibition catalogue, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1997, p122. 2 Rachel Milne and Sarah Johnson in conversation, Newcastle, 6 th July 2019. 3 ibid 4 ibid 5 ibid 6 ibid