ARTIST BIO

Portland, OR-based artist Rainen Knecht (b. 1982) employs a form of dream logic to examine beauty, humor, and horror. Her femme figures are, as she describes, “situated between warrior princess and sturdy milkmaid.” Clawed and distorted, they enact art historical motifs imbued with mischievous agency. In recent work, Knecht, a new mother, has studied the mother and child figures intertwined. The massive upheaval of becoming a mother, paired with the experience of witnessing her own mother’s death of cancer, is a centering gravity in Knecht’s paintings. Her questioning of the frames of rigid utilitarianism led her into gratifying exploration of materiality and decoration, as well as ideas and questions related to protection, security and beauty, in recent works with artist made frames.

Knecht studied at the San Francisco Art Institute, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2006. Her exhibition history includes solo and two-person exhibitions at Fourteen30 Contemporary, Portland, Oregon; SITUATIONS, New York, New York; and CAPITAL, San Francisco, California, as well as recent group exhibitions at Shulamit Nazarian and Various Small Fires in Los Angeles, California; Fisher Parrish, Brooklyn, New York; Stems Gallery, Brussels, Belgium; and The Pit, Los Angeles, CA. In 2021 she was awarded the Hallie Ford Fellowship.