Petrichor: A solo exhibition by Rachel English

Square One Gallery is pleased to present Petrichor, Rachel English’s sophomore solo exhibition with the gallery, in which the artist turns back toward the sky and all that it has long asked us to consider. From monumental cloud formations and electric storms to the distant reaches of the night sky, English presents the atmosphere as both a physical force and an enduring source of existential inquiry. These paintings draw the eye upward toward phenomena that can be witnessed, studied, and rendered, yet never fully possessed or understood.

Taking its title from the scent that rises when rain meets dry earth, Petrichor evokes the lingering evidence of an atmospheric event. It is an encounter between atmosphere and terrain, made perceptible through something that cannot be seen. Although the ground remains absent from English’s compositions, its presence is quietly understood. Every cloud, storm, and constellation is observed from somewhere below, placing the viewer within the vastness of the image while leaving its boundaries unresolved. Petrichor becomes the invisible thread joining sky to earth, the infinite to the finite, and the divine to the mortal. It gives physical presence to what descends from above, translating forces of unimaginable scale into something sensed through the body and held within human memory.

Born and raised beneath the wide skies of Texas, English has developed a lifelong intimacy with their shifting light, depth, and character. Guided primarily by photographs taken near her home in the Texas Hill Country, she translates fleeting atmospheric events into layered oil paintings of remarkable luminosity and dimension. Her longstanding interests in astronomy and physics inform this close observation, while her omission of the horizon releases the sky from a fixed sense of place. Clouds extend beyond the canvas, illuminated forms emerge from deep expanses of color, and brief natural phenomena assume an almost timeless presence.

“These paintings are my personal way of wrestling heaven to earth, in an effort to satisfy the human urge to cherish Existence, and to revere its transcendent meaning.”

— Rachel English

Within Petrichor, the sky is neither backdrop nor symbol of a singular belief. It is a vast, changing presence through which English considers the human condition and our desire to locate ourselves within something larger. The works hold the physical and the unknowable in the same frame, returning to those moments when the natural world appears to exceed ordinary comprehension. Like petrichor rising after rain, they suggest that the unknowable is not distant from human experience, but revealed through our encounter with it.