About
Rachel MacFarlane is a visual artist. She creates paper models as references for paintings that explore conditions of place.
BIOGRAPHY
MacFarlane has an MFA from Rutgers University, a BFA from OCAD University, and a Certificate of Advanced Visual Studies from OCADU Florence program. She’s had solo exhibitions at Nicholas Metivier Gallery (Toronto, ON), Jarvis Hall Gallery(Calgary, AB), Mason Gross Gallery at Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ), the Howard Park Institute ( Toronto, ON) , and Anna Leonowens Gallery at NSCAD University (Halifax, NS). She’s participated in group exhibitions in New York City, San Francisco, Florence, Quebec City, Halifax, Calgary, Toronto, and Philadelphia.
MacFarlane was awarded a 2021 and 2019 Canada Council for the Arts Explore and Create Grant, a 2019 Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, 2019 Vermont Studio Center Residency, 2015 Ontario Arts Council Grant, the Doris McCarthy Artist-in-Residence at Fool's Paradise in Scarborough, Ontario, the NSCAD Robert Pope Artist Residency at NSCAD University, Triangle Artists Workshop position in NYC, and was a visiting artist at Cow House Studios in Wexford, Ireland. She received the Drawing and Painting medal from OCAD University, and the Rutgers Mason Gross Dean’s Choice Award among numerous other awards.
Her work is in public and private collections including Doris McCarthy Gallery at the University of Toronto, Jim and Susan Hill Collection, Equitable Bank, Stikeman Elliot, Royal Bank of Canada, Scotiabank, and The Donovan Collection at the University of Toronto. She is currently a Part-Time Lecturer at Rutgers University and has provided numerous artist talks including Concordia University, University of Toronto, OCAD University, NSCAD University and Sheridan College.
She is represented by Hollis Taggart Gallery in NYC and Norberg Hall Gallery in Calgary.
To see her full c.v. click here.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I make paintings that rebuild site-specific landscapes from memory. My process begins with physical time spent in a particular place: walking, drawing, and absorbing its specific qualities. I pay close attention to what lingers after I leave—the texture of the light, the shape of the terrain, a sense of atmosphere. I don’t take photographs. Instead, I let the experience settle, then reconstruct it in the studio using small paper maquettes.
These works sit between illusion and collapse. They are not depictions of specific locations, but carry the residue of memory. I’m interested in how landscapes shift over time and how they carry personal, ecological, and psychological meaning. The paintings often imagine altered futures: vegetation in the foreground, weather as a signal, human presence receding. I want the viewer to feel like they’ve entered a familiar world that’s beginning to reassemble itself.
I grew up in southern Ontario, between forest and suburb, in a time when video games and the internet were just becoming part of daily life. That early friction between tactile and virtual space continues to shape my practice. Today, we move through simulated environments constantly. We run through digital forests, watch natural disasters unfold through screens, and replace lived experience with rendered versions. My paintings resist that detachment. While I use illusionistic techniques, I also disrupt them. Shadows misbehave. Perspective slips. Light often becomes the central force in the image. The work suggests a place that is already shifting, already uncertain.
I use paper as a stand-in for ground and matter. That material fragility feels essential. These rebuilt spaces are not about nostalgia or escape. They are diagrams of transformation. They reflect how memory distorts place, and how our presence shapes what we remember. I aim to offer a sense of place without asserting control or ownership. The maquette becomes a filter, less about recording and more about reconstruction. Through that lens, I can engage the landscape not as territory, but as something alive, shifting, and shared.
I think of the paintings as speculative landscapes. I want to open a space for reflection on how we remember places, how we shape them, and how they might outlast us.
Artist's Voice—Rachel MacFarlane
A video studio visit made for Nicholas Metivier Gallery - June 2020 during the COVID pandemic in NYC.
FILMED BY JAHI SABATER
With thanks to the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation
