“Rachel Budd’s paintings inhabit a no-mans land between abstraction and figuration, although abstraction is there true home.Some of them depict forests, but even those which don’t look as if they might: rather transcendental forests, full of strange sparks and flares like will-o-the-wisps, and as luminous as a forest seen through the eyes of a nineteenth century symbolist. On the other hand , it’s an ordinary , physical forest, with damp bits and ferns and gnats at the edges.

As a child long woodland walks would be spent looking at things in minute detail – trees, insects, fungi- whatever came to her attention. These details – all the objects that make up a forest – were constituent parts of the larger landscape enveloping her on all four sides. On all six indeed.The abstract details in her paintings are not pure introspection. They are also observations, memories of nature.

Budd’s vision is essentially optimistic. Her paintings are not visions, but the sense of imminent vision infuses them. Everything in them appears to be melting and reforming. They suggest that reality may not be what it seems: it may be better.”

David Lillington
Purdy Hicks, Solo Show 1993