A Conversation with a Surrealist

To start off my week right, I sat down with the painter of this year’s cover for Marooned, Rachel Coughenour. Her artwork connects perfectly to this year’s theme “RE-,” but I wanted to know more about her inspiration for the piece and her passion for art itself. Rachel and I started off by talking about her studies here at ASU. She has taken a number of art classes such as sketching, metallurgy, and painting in pursuit of her major in Art Education. “Why education?” I asked. She replied that in the past her art teachers had simultaneously improved her talent and inspired her. “I want to be one of those teachers,” she said. I could relate to this pursuit so well, as I myself am hoping to teach English and kindle a love of literature in students one day. I told her this and she shared my enthusiasm for literature, since her art is not confined to the visual. Rachel is inspired by all mediums of expression, so she also writes in her spare time. We talked about how we both dream of writing a novel one day, in between summer breaks and grading students’ work. For now, though, she focuses on her artwork.

Rachel’s style of art completely embodies the theme for this edition of Marooned. The words “recreate,” “reimagine,” “renew,” and “reconstruct” were all thrown around during our conversation. I asked what inspired her to paint the cover, and she couldn’t pin down an exact moment when she decided to paint it. “I like making pieces that I would like to look at,” she told me. Truly, her art has a way of drawing one’s eyes and mind. I have been amazed by her creativity, her ability to take an old, worn-out idea and completely recreate its meaning. Rachel said she could never paint a still life, never create something so stagnant or expected. She combines the opposite with the original, and prides herself on producing work that makes people rethink their opinion of something mundane.

I asked for her favorite artist and again she lit up. Full of excitement, she pulled out her phone and showed me an Instagram account of a surrealist photographer called Mothmeister. This artist uses taxidermy and costuming to create surreal scenes that are unexpected and unexplainable. In one photo, a woman wearing a black ball gown and a feather covered mask reaches with tentacle-like fingers towards a black bird. Because his photographs are all so different, Rachel was not able to choose a favorite. The surrealism in each work materialized such that each seemed so extraordinary and incomparable to the next.

I was so glad to talk to Rachel about her work and her interests within the arts. Getting the chance to talk to her about her inspiration and creativity showed me how even the most ordinary concepts could be turned on their heads. Now that I have been exposed to more surrealism, I know that her artwork for the cover truly encompasses the re-envisioning of Marooned. I would like to thank her for contributing to the journal, and I know we all look forward to seeing more of her work in the future.