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Rachel Wells Gallery

Born in 1949 and raised in Greenwich Village and in her nineteenth century immigrant grandmother’s Eastern Parkway home, Wells is a Baby Boomer who came of age in the New York Hippie scene and the political battlegrounds of NYC streets.
“Art was a part of my grade school life [and was] definitely part of the neighborhood Cafe scene. Art was Louis Comfort Tiffany, beatnik, psychedelia, rock and roll, free love and power to the people.” said Wells of her earliest art influences and of my generation...“We were young for a very long time.."
Wells is one of those rare artists who have managed to make a living from their craft. After graduating from New York University with a degree in the history of literature and religion, she decided that instead of pursuing theology at a seminary, she would pursue making art. Another way to God.
She enrolled in classes at the Women’s Interart Center, started her own hand silk-screened greeting card business called Late Night Fantasy Graphics in the lofts of Noho and the Bowery, and a West 35th Street storefront. Each silkscreened greeting card was a scene as viewed through a window .
Eventually, she decided that multiples – were not her thing. “ I wanted to make one of a thing not 100." she explained – so she took three years drawing plein air landscapes in the streets, cafes, and parks of the city and four years drawing the model and still life at the Art Students League. I graduated ASL in 1999, by that time I could draw and paint anything

Color and craft has had a powerful hold on Wells since the days when her uncle, notable 50's and 60's art director John English and his family, would drive down to Mexico during summers to collect Mexican crafts - rugs, pottery and sculpture. "Their palette inspired me...I had never taken pink seriously before then".
Like Wells herself, each of her pieces – whether pencil, oils, clay or pastel – has something to say about the inimitable, undeniable, unquestionable everlasting moment.
We're all here. Now you are also. I'm so glad.

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