Following on from last year’s incredible Artist in Residence with Maya Ronchetti, we reached out to our community in a quest to seek out the next inspiring collaboration. The variety and quality of applicants we received was phenomenal. We were humbled and so grateful to welcome so many applications from a number of incredibly unique and talented individuals who demonstrated such a connection and passion for Cabilla and our mission to connect everyone in the world with the restorative power of nature.
After much deliberation and thought, our hearts and minds were drawn to the amazing Rachel Redfern, a practising artist and Relationship Dynamic Coach with a keen interest in the intersection between the arts and mental health. Emotionally and creatively Rachel demonstrated a strong connection to Cornwall, and her areas of artistic expertise in painting landscapes and abstract florals felt like such a natural partnership. With a commitment for connecting people and place, Rachel felt a strong sense that spending some time in solitude as part of nature would allow her to connect and self-reflect through paint and words.
Having left a successful career in the city, feeling a little broken, Rachel has experienced first hand the benefit of healing through art and coaching in order to lead a fulfilling and happy life. Rachel turned her personal experience into helping others through her coaching work, including her work for ‘She Leads Change’ and focussing individually with a number of women from board level, to doctors and artists. Rachel said: “Prior to embarking on a second career in the arts I had a twenty year career spanning charity, central government bodies and the professional services. Juggling a busy career in the city with young children (and a then hidden family trauma) took its toll on my physical and mental health. Stepping off the corporate ladder I made the conscious decision to change how I lived, seeking a closer relationship with who I really was which in turn led to a more fulfilling life. Pursuing the arts and training to be a Relationship Dynamic Coach helped put those jigsaw pieces of my life together so that my family experience whilst shaping me, would not define me.”
“This residency time could provides a more intimate insight for both me and others into the requirement for solitude to allow creative pivotal moments to emerge”
Arriving at a point in her life where her children have flown the nest, she felt the need to explore ways of moving forward and transitioning into this new life phase: “I am now at a point in my life with my art practice, where looking at things with fresh eyes feels like important work to do.” Between contemplating a new direction in life, and taking up a new role as a trustee for the charity Mind, Rachel decided that some reflective time would help her to shape this new stage in her life: “I have been considering a Phd in Art but am particularly keen to look at how I can weave into that my passion for arts and mental health. Being a trustee for the charity Mind I value some reflective time on how my research could be best shaped.”
Taking into consideration Rachel’s life experiences, artistic passions and of course, location, our Artist in Residence project this year will focus upon full immersion in nature at key seasonal moments, away from the distractions and realities of life. Rachel will reflect through journaling, photography and artistic expression how being in nature can affect body and mind. We hope to capture thought process, artistic flow, observations, subtleties in nature, combined with the physical and mental impact that immersion in an ancient temperate rainforest can have on a human being. We will examine morphic resonance, an area of interest for Rachel, a theory developed by British biologist Rupert Sheldrake which is defined as: ‘paranormal influence by which a pattern of events or behaviour can facilitate subsequent occurrences of similar patterns’. Join the journey this year by signing up to our newsletter or following us on instagram for regular updates from Rachel through the seasons. We hope you will join us.
We’ll leave you with some poignant quotes carefully selected by Rachel, as inspiration for her residency here with us in 2024.
About Rachel Redfern
Rachel, 55, is a practicing artist with a keen interest in the intersection between the arts and mental health, and recently became a trustee for Mind. She lost her father to suicide as a young adult and is a carer for her mother who suffers from Psychosis triggered by these tragic events. Art has saved her, having spent a lifetime dealing with the devastating effects of mental illness and complex death.
She completed a Foundation in Art Psychotherapy at Roehampton University and plans to focus future academic study on research that supports the broader use of the arts, in connection with place and mental health. The foundation course has rekindled her lifetime’s interest in the collective unconscious and she feels there is much more to contribute given what she has overcome.
Rachel completed an MA in Fine Art in 2015 and focused on painting, place and the academic work of Rupert Sheldrake. Looking at how a repetitive and rhythmic process could create the energy to push her painting forward, harnessing poetry and music to tap into any morphic resonance in the landscape. Her final show and chosen place for study was her home at the time which was sited in the middle of a Site of Scientific Interest called Woolbeding Common in West Sussex managed by the National Trust (which had clearly been a temperate rainforest). She was born with a fascination with what we cannot see as much as what we can see in the people and places we encounter because she feels the spirit of what lies beneath. Painting for Rachel is a reflection of the connection both with the outside world, the past and her existence in the here and now and this is an area of study she is keen to keep pursuing, potentially to PHD level.
Prior to embarking on a second career in the arts she had a twenty year career spanning charity, central government bodies and the professional services. Juggling a busy career in the city with young children (and a then hidden family trauma) took its toll on her physical and mental health. Stepping off the corporate ladder, she made the conscious decision to change how she lived, seeking a closer relationship with who she really was which may in turn lead to a more fulfilling life. Pursuing the arts and training to be a Relationship Dynamic Coach helped put those jigsaw pieces of her life together so that her family experience whilst shaping her, would not define her.