Rebecca Waechter

Charleston has been home to me twice. I first lived here in the early 2000s, then spent years moving around with my husband, an Air Force pilot at the time, always planning to come back. Four years ago we settled back in Charleston on Johns Island.
Most of work is rooted in the Renaissance. The drama, the humanity, the way those painters made you stop and feel something. But Renaissance painters also painted the world immediately around them. The hills, rivers, and skies of their own regions. I live here. When I walk around the lowcountry is impossible to ignore. Painting this place felt like the most honest thing I could do.
My figurative and portrait work carries that same foundation. Symbolism with a holy feel, attention to the figure, but brought into the present. Timeless and contemporary at the same time. A thread running through all of it is mental health, and specifically my own lived experience with anxiety. I’ve always been drawn to the parts that don’t get talked about as much, and I hope that my work opens up some authentic conversations about anxiety.
I also paint aviation work inspired by my husband’s dedication as a pilot. That subject sits a little apart from the rest, but it belongs to the same intent to make work about my life and the people in it.
I want the work to move something in the viewer. To make them think about the world around them and the world within themselves.