Rachel Barlow, the artist and writer, is many things. She is a book illustrator, columnist, writer, painter, blogger, cartoonist , author, landscape and portrait artist. It’s hard to keep up with all of the creative things Rachel is.
She also suffers from depression and bi-polar disorder.
Through some difficult and painful times, she has moved forward and with great determination to forge a creative life for herself, her husband and her two children. Yes, she is also a wife and mother. She has a full-time job. She is busy and creative, every day.
And she is succeeding, as many of us believed she would, but in a way she could hardly imagine for herself.
She is a wonderful and increasingly successful artist and an inspiration to those of us lucky enough to know her.
Rachel is all about talent and the power of creativity, she has been a student of mine for more than five years and she grows and blossoms and experiments almost by the hour.
Rachel has channeled her suffering and disorder into something positive, pure creativity, and she produces some of the most uplifting and touching art I can recall. She posted the water color above on Facebook just before she spilled diet coke on it, I asked to buy it, but she wouldn’t take any money for it.
I am grateful to have it, this morning I pinned it up on the white birch in the yard and took a picture of it. I can’t think of a better thing to look at in the morning and I will especially save it for cold winter mornings to look at while I write. Rachel is the spirit of creativity and its healing and uplifting power, it grounds her and steadies her every day of her life. You can see Rachel’s wonderful work for yourselves on her quite excellent blog.
She is as generous and thoughtful a person as she is gifted. Her work brightens my life and the lives of others every day and her landscapes are moving her quickly towards life as a full-time artist. She is selling everyone she paints. (She will also be selling and showing her art at the Bedlam Farm Open House this coming weekend.