A Studio Visit and Interview with Painter Rachel Davis
This studio visit is a gentle walk into the creative world of Rachel Davis, a mixed-media painter who works between two very different but equally special spaces in the San Francisco Bay Area. One of them is tucked inside her garden at home, quiet, green, and full of natural light. The other sits in the historic ICB Building in Sausalito, where over a hundred artists work side by side, sharing ideas, stories, and the occasional lunch break. Between these two places, Rachel has built a rhythm that keeps her connected; one studio feeds her need for solitude, and the other inspires her through community.
In our conversation, Rachel talks about what her days look like — mornings often start with a stroll through the garden, scissors in hand, clipping leaves or flowers that might later find their way into a painting or an impromptu ikebana arrangement. At the ICB, she sketches, paints, and chats with other artists, always open to the unexpected turns that creativity brings.
Her ongoing series, Women in Rooms, began as a way to revisit memories of her mother but has grown into a larger exploration of how women move through and hold space, both physical and emotional. She also shares how her teaching and painting connect, how her organised chaos keeps her honest, and how the smell of acrylic medium now feels like home. Through her words, it’s clear that Rachel’s art isn’t just about what’s seen on the canvas; it’s about paying attention, staying curious, and finding beauty in the ordinary moments of everyday life.
Rachel Davis is a mixed-media painter working between two studios in the San Francisco Bay Area — a light-filled space at the historic ICB Building in Sausalito, home to a vibrant community of over 100 artists, and a backyard garden studio at her home. Her work moves between figurative painting and Asian-inspired botanical abstraction, both exploring perception, memory, and beauty in the overlooked. Whether rendering a quiet interior or tracing the imprint of a leaf, Davis seeks the same balance of intuition and restraint — a wabi-sabi embrace of imperfection and change. A retired psychologist, she brings a lifelong interest in emotional truth to her studio practice. Her work has been juried into museum exhibitions, including the de Young Open and the Triton Museum. It is held in collections across the United States, Europe, Australia, and the Middle East.
1. Can you describe your typical studio day and creative process?
Typical is a stretch — I like to mix things up. At home, there’s often some garden meandering first, scissors in hand, maybe an impromptu ikebana (Japanese flower) arrangement inspired by what’s blooming. At ICB ART, I love the hum of community — lunch with fellow artists to puzzle through a creative dilemma, studio pop-ins for inspiration and stimulation. Some sketching of faces is part of nearly every day, along with a bit of art-historical mining — lately through Diebenkorn, Alice Neel, and Maira Kalman. I often end by wiping leftover paint or ink into a journal, building accidental collage fodder for future paintings.
2. What is the primary inspiration behind your current body of work?
Memory and the spaces women inhabit — both literal rooms and inner landscapes — drive my current work. The Women in Rooms series began as a way of revisiting my mother and the mid-century world she moved through, but it’s grown into something broader: how women hold space, retreat, reveal. The botanical work feeds this too — it’s about presence, touch, imperfection, and what remains after the gesture.
3. What is your favourite memory or incident from your studio?
During a community “Throwdown” event at the ICB — where artists were challenged to create a complete painting in a single day, guided only by a chosen theme, colour, or piece of music — I painted a large nude on a pink settee, inspired by Diebenkorn, with The Chicks’ ” Gaslighter as my soundtrack. Music pounding, clock ticking, charcoal smearing — it was pure immersion. No time to overthink, just instinct, gesture, and paint. Heaven.
4. Do you have any studio assistants, or do visitors, such as pets or children, often accompany you?
It’s mostly just me, but when I’m preparing for Open Studios or packing a significant work to ship cross-country, I have an excellent studio assistant, Cathryn Lynea. She’s calm, capable, and unflappable — offering the kind of help that makes even oversized pieces feel manageable. When I’m teaching in my garden studio, students become collaborators of sorts — shoulder to shoulder, printing with botanicals from my garden, taking creative chances together. Those days bring a shared energy that balances the solitude of painting.
5. How would you describe a dream studio for yourself?
I’m already blessed with two — the creative, communal hum of ICB ART on the Sausalito waterfront and my backyard studio nestled in a wild garden. In a fantasy life, as my work keeps scaling up, I’d supersize what I have: more wall, more light — an upscale fantasy built on what’s already pretty incredible. The same mix of solitude and community, just roomier.
6. What does your studio smell of right now?
Mostly acrylic medium — not glamorous, but familiar. The truth is, I hardly notice it. When I’m in the zone, I’m lost in the work. And when things are truly clicking, I have a tell: my mouth waters. It’s as if I’m smelling the most delicious meal, only it’s being cooked up on the wall — my body’s quiet way of saying “YES!”
7. If you could set up your studio anywhere in the world, where would it be?
Honestly? Right where I am — just larger. Both studios keep me tethered: one to community, one to nature. They’re the correct distance apart to let the ideas breathe.
8. Can you discuss any ongoing projects or plans for your work?
I’m deep into the Women in Rooms series — paintings that contrast quick, intuitive gestures with slower, more deliberate ones. I’m also continuing to teach my live, intimate mixed workshops from the garden studio, where students work with materials gathered on site, experiment with large-scale Gelli plates, and ditch perfectionism while turning the volume way up on their own visual language. And I keep honing my self-paced, standalone, botanical Gelli printmaking class. The painting and teaching practices talk to each other — one about memory and presence, the other about grounding and surrender.
9. How do you organise your space?
I’m a very disorganized painter — I move fast and clean slow. It’s thrilling and occasionally maddening. My teaching materials, though, are another story: collage bits sorted into colour-coded bins, drawers labelled with paints, texture tools, stencils, and stamps for Gelli printing play. Chaos in one corner, order in another — that balance keeps me honest.
10. What is your favourite corner in the studio?
In both of my studios, there’s a corner stacked with bulging folders — hundreds upon hundreds of faces and figures drawn fast, before thought could interfere. Those piles hold the rawest version of my practice: immediate, searching, alive. They remind me to trust instinct over polish.
Being in Rachel’s studio feels like being inside a living, breathing pause. In Sausalito, her space hums with quiet chatter, the sound of brushes tapping water jars, and the shuffle of footsteps from nearby studios; it’s full of life and gentle exchange. Back home, her garden studio offers the complete opposite: stillness, the faint smell of paint mixing with fresh air, and the soft rustle of leaves just outside the window.
There’s a calmness there, a kind of quiet focus that seems to settle over everything. You can almost imagine her sitting with a cup of tea, paint drying on the wall, surrounded by the traces of her day’s work. It feels like a place where time slows down, where art, memory, and presence all quietly meet.
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Read more about Rachel on her Website and Instagram.
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