Rachel Haynes
Please feel free to contact me for licensing and pints:
bluealgaecreative@gmail.com
Places you may have seen my work:
Uppercase Magazine, Issue #13
Conundrum
Jess Ellen
Art Consulting Groups
About Me: I started photographing and altering photos in earnest after my son was born. Before that I was an oil painter. When I was contemplating pregnancy, I struck a bargain with my babe that if I agreed to stop painting with all those nasty paints and solvents (so as to avoid him having a soft, spoiled melon of a head) he would, in exchange, be an excellent sleeper once he was born. He didn't really keep up his end of the deal, but stranded on the sofa day after day with my bundle of joy snoring and sleep drooling all over me, I reach for my laptop and I was reborn. I took about 3 trillion pictures of said babe, taught myself how to use Photoshop, discovered Etsy, blogging, and the handmade movement. Nothing has been the same since.
As my son grew and our very small world started to grow, I found that I took my camera everywhere, and photographed everything. It was a way to be with my son without loosing my mind to the dullness of entertaining a wee one every single day, all day long. It also allowed me to remain connected to my own life, my own desires, my creative hunger. To feed the hunger is imperative because it is what allows me to feed my child everything else he needs, even still.
What I Do: Most of my work is honestly born of an obsessive need to observe and record the details around me. I get lost, absorbed in details. As a child, whenever I was alone waiting out some penalty for a wrong done, I would focus my attention on the details of the world around me. The texture of fabric was favorite detail but also the patterns that made up the aesthetic of that fabric. I enjoyed looking for the shapes made in the negative space between objects. In my adult life I've come to loved the threshold of two very different objects coming together. The details there are so often missed in favor of attending to the objects themselves. There is magic there. The snow upon the weeds, the stone upon fabric, a forest's top meeting the clouds, rain on a window... all of these are relationships that I am fascinated by.
Photography and Digital Art: I do tend to refer to myself as a photographer because it's the easiest thing to say to folks who just want a cursory answer to "who are you?" But it always feels a little fraudulent. My camera is a tool but I don't live and breath it. Photoshop is a tool also, but only one of them. As I develop and learn I hope to utilize many other tools in my work. My goal is to make imagery that is provocative, that reflects some specific reality in myself, that sings a song I need to hear. As long as I can do that I will, with whatever tools I have at my disposal.
Other work: I love to draw, work with fabric, the idea of printmaking, paper of all kinds, etc.