Grego Rachko's photostream

Using words, patterns and images in paintings, I explore questions about spirituality, culture, sensuality and community.

I paint patterns as a way of reflecting the patterns in our own lives. We create patterns to decorate objects, gardens, fabrics, ourselves and just to create beauty. Our societies, religions, and cultures happen in patterns that give our lives meaning. I use patterns in a painting to reinforce both the composition and the content.

Many artists have used patterns in their imagery. I feel a real kinship to those and love noticing how others use it: combined with imagery; depicted on surfaces of objects; as a ground.

The idea of figure/ground in my paintings talks about the connection of all things, the fact that we are not really separate from things, or each other.

Separation is a useful conceit, in living, like using a line in painting. It delineates the edges of things, when, in life, there are no outlines. I use a catalog of techniques that are about asserting the picture plane, at the same time fabricating the illusion of space and objects the perception of which, in fact, takes place only in our minds.

Inquiries at freehandstudio@hotmail.com