Hidden Places: Tea-Colored Water
Some places stay with you for reasons that are hard to explain.
Not because they’re famous. Not because they’re dramatic in some big, obvious way. Just because something about them settles into you. The light feels a certain way. The air feels different. You remember how quiet it was, or how small you felt standing there, or how it seemed like the place was keeping to itself a little.
That’s what this painting, Quiet Copper Run, feels like to me. Named, of course, for the coppers, browns, and tea-stained water that gives the painting its strong grounding presence and serious nature.
I started the Hidden Places collection because I keep thinking about the kinds of places people return to in their minds. Not always the grand overlook or the postcard version of a place. Sometimes it’s the tucked-away trail, the dark water, the bend in the trees—the place you almost missed if you weren’t paying attention. The places that feel a little more private. A little more held back. The ones that don’t try to explain themselves to everyone.
This piece has that kind of feeling. There’s a heaviness to it, but not in a negative way. More like depth. Stillness. The kind of quiet that makes you slow down without meaning to. I wasn’t interested in making it brighter or prettier than it was. I wanted to keep the mood intact. I wanted it to feel the way the place itself feels.
That matters to me in my work.
I’m not usually trying to make something feel polished for the sake of it. I want it to feel true first. I want the piece to hold onto what made the place worth noticing to begin with. Sometimes that’s warmth. Sometimes it’s openness. Sometimes it’s this darker, more grounded feeling—where everything is a little softened, a little shadowed, and somehow more memorable because of it.
That’s what I kept coming back to here.
It doesn’t feel loud. It doesn’t ask for attention. But it has presence. And I think those are often the places that stay with us the longest.
This piece is part of Hidden Places because that’s what it represents to me—not just physically, but emotionally. The parts of life that feel quieter, deeper, less performed. The places that give something back without asking much from you, except that you notice them.
I love working on that kind of place.
Not because it’s trendy or marketable or easy to explain, but because I think a lot of us are hungry for that feeling. Something real. Something a little less exposed. Something that reminds us there is still depth in the world—still beauty that isn’t trying too hard, still meaning in places that aren’t shouting for it.
‘Quiet Copper Run’ feels like that to me. It’s something that can help me hold onto that feeling.
—Rachel
