Rachel Siporin: Bathers
A few weeks ago, I met with Rachel Siporin at her home and studio in South Glastonbury, Connecticut, to discuss her show, Bathers. We engaged in conversation about the trajectory of her work across the several decades of her career: from early career still life painting, to exploring printmaking with Michael Mazur at Brandeis, to how she acquired her etching press, to a body of work that came from old negatives that were found in the attic of her childhood home of her father’s trip to Mexico, to her relationship with water and swimming, which led her to her current body of work. Bathers is not merely about people swimming in the forest–it is about her own relationship with being in the water, her affinity towards abstract expressionism and gestural mark making, and what she sees when she goes on her daily walks at the nature preserve across the street from her house–a place that, as she described it, truly felt like an extension of her own home.
Rachel: For the last seventy years, Cotton Hollow has been a nature preserve. However, it was the site of a mill which burned down in Revolutionary War times, and in the early 20th century, the site of a factory that manufactured book binding boards, its stone ruin still standing. Roaring Brook runs from the state forest, through Cotton Hollow, emptying into the Connecticut River. I've lived in my 1820’s post and beam house since 1998 and have walked my dogs on the paths, and cliffs overlooking Roaring Brook ever since.
I was fortunate that after my 2022 show at Bowery Gallery, Murals in the Marketplace, I already had a clear idea of what I would do next, which has seldom been the case after a solo show. I was already planning, beginning with sketchbook drawings, and drypoint prints based on walks through Cotton Hollow with our dogs.
Rachel Siporin, Wake, Etching, 16×20 inches, 2024.
As I became immersed in the Bathers series, I would bring my cell phone with me and, from a very great distance, I would click. When I returned to the studio and expanded sections of the images, I would discover things.
Eileen: What do you mean? What would you discover?
Rachel: Sometimes I discovered dramas that I couldn't see in the frame of the original photo, groups of figures, for example, like this painting right here, when in the deep shadows, three female figures standing on a boulder emerged. The process reminded me of the 1960’s Antonioni film, Blow Up where the photographer discovers a suspected murder as he develops a photograph in his darkroom.
Rachel Siporin, Dark Woods, Flashe on Panel, 30×40 inches, 2025
Eileen: I love that painting.
Rachel: The terrain is perilous- roots, rocks and boulders up to cliffs. I climb down the rocks to get closer to the beach, rushing water, and bathers.
Back in the studio, I construct the compositions, through sketchbook drawings. There might be a figure inspired from one image, and I build a composition from there.
Eileen: Oh I see!
Rachel: This is the sketchbook drawing that I did for the painting, Dark Woods, and for the Caran d’Ache drawing by the same name.
Rachel Siporin, Dark Woods, Caran d’Ache Water Soluble Crayons on Rives BFK, 30×44 inches, 2025
Eileen: And now, is the color very invented? Or, are you trying to work off of the photograph?
Rachel: I’m inspired by the color of the water in Cotton Hollow. There's very little blue in the water. Rather,there's a lot of oranges and greens. I am definitely inspired by the color that I see–perceptually. But back in the studio, I engage in a dialogue on color with my paintings of bathers on the studio walls. I think there's a number of things going on. First, there's the narrative. The way I work with the narrative is not so much a story, but concerns relationships imagined between the figures, and that is where the mystery lies. As I mentioned in my artist statement, I start with no connection to the people, and yet, as I'm painting them, they become very real to me.
Rachel Siporin, Blue Leash, Flashe on Panel, 24×18 inches, 2023.
Rachel: To begin the process of painting, I apply a ground to the surface of the panel.
Eileen: I noticed you are starting with something bright.
Rachel: Well, not necessarily…sometimes I do. Like this has a cadmium red, but it could also be a Terre Vert or a Cobalt Blue.
Eileen: I really love seeing the side of the panel–all red on the side interacts with the painting.
Rachel: The thing is, the ground is essential to me as I'm painting,
Eileen: Yes, I can definitely see that.
Rachel: From this point on, the color choices I make respond to the color ground. There’s a process, a series of different levels. There's the walk–not knowing what the preserve has in store for me, in the studio–discovering the image within the images, drawing in the sketchbook and moving things around to establish composition, and ultimately, the process of painting.
Eileen: Yes.
Rachel: I want the ground to participate in all the color choices. My process of paint application is really connected to action painters, to Abstract Expressionists. I've always been interested in showing the brush, layering and responding to the gesture of the marks. This has always been part of my painting process. The water is a great vehicle for that, for creating layers of color, in the depth of the water and on its surface.
In Spring 2025, I became engaged in several works where women are swimming, their flesh seen below the surface, its edge sometimes dissolves, or fractures, and above the water, when clarity returns. I've been a lifelong swimmer and the experience of being in the water really informs the way I paint the figures. It comes directly from my experience and visual memory of being in the water.
Eileen: Your personal experience.
Rachel: Yes, my personal experience.
Rachel Siporin, What the Light was Like, Caran d’Ache Water Soluble Crayons on Rives BFK, 30×44 inches, 2025
Eileen: I was wondering if you hired models or constructed your whole situation from sketches.
Rachel: I never hire models, because when I go to Cotton Hollow, I find groups of people interacting in marvelous ways, and in unimaginable juxtapositions. Sometimes they know each other, sometimes they don't, and I could never make that up with drawings from models. For example, the girl in Lift Off, jumps up off a boulder, and in the distance I discover a guy, scaling a rock. I just wouldn’t be able to have models recreate that.
Rachel Siporin, Lift Off, Flashe on Panel, 24×18 inches, 2024
Eileen: I completely understand. So what artists do you look at?
Rachel: I love the California Bay Area Figure Painters, Elmer Bischoff, David Park, Diebenkorn and Joan Brown. Also, Philip Guston, I love Guston’s work, every period of his work. I love the paintings he did in the 40s. He was a friend of my father's from the 1930’s when they were WPA muralists.
Eileen Oh yes, I'm just constantly amazed by Deibenkorn’s draftsmanship, but yes, I could see that with your color. And I absolutely love Guston.
Rachel: Another artist I adore is Bob Thompson. There's an incredible Bob Thompson in the Wadsworth Atheneum, Garden of Music.
Eileen: Oh, really.
Rachel: I love direct painting. When I look at a Sargent, I love to see the brushwork. I respond to direct, gestural mark making. I like to see the surface. I love the pristine surface of Vermeer, of course. However, in my own work, I am most excited by painting that shows the painter’s process, where you see the brushstroke, which is why I mentioned the influences earlier of the California Bay Area Artists and Abstract Expressionism.
I taught all levels of our drawing and painting courses in my 37 years as Professor of Art at Central Connecticut State University. In addition, my decades of drawing and painting from life inform every figure composition in the Bathers series.
Eileen: Absolutely.
Rachel: Because of my long relationship with swimming, I'll go anywhere for water… the pool, the lake, the ocean–one could say that I seek water! Bathers is the first time I've produced a body of work that responds to a particular place–the walks that I take, the images that come back from that, and then what evolves out of it.
Eileen: “The walks that I take and the images that come out of it,”--I really like that.
Rachel: Yes! I will keep going with this. I have lots of ideas for more of this work. I'm not going stop working on these once I have my show up on the wall. It's not like a “What's next” sort of thing, as we spoke about earlier. This show is just where I'm at right now, and I feel that this is what's going to occupy my time for a very long time.
Bathers is on view from September 2-27 2025, with an opening reception on on Saturday, September 6, from 2-5pm, and a closing reception on Saturday, September 27, from 2-5pm.
