McKenzie Raley

Visual Artist

Mckenzie Raley is a sculptor and painter based in NYC and the Hudson Valley. After studying painting at Columbia College in Chicago, Raley moved to NYC shifting her work to a sculpture and textile-based practice. After nearly 8 years in the city, she relocated to upstate New York. Her work has been shown throughout NYC, Brooklyn, the Hudson Valley and LA. Raley currently lives in Hudson, NY with her wife and son.

Mckenzie Raley makes drawings that are sculptures. Her most recent work formalizes the artist’s repetitive strokes of hand, as seen in her cuts of wood and her whimsical compositions. Creating landscapes out of wood, her palette is often monochromatic. Because of this, the shadows of each dimensional shape within the frame are equally as important compositionally as the shapes themselves.

These vignettes pay direct homage to the constant movement of an open landscape. They are meditative work -- meditative to the viewer, just as they are to the artist herself. By stripping away busyness, viewers are permitted to quietly follow the lines of Raley’s hand. And in doing so, we find solace in the repetitive shapes and the composition as a whole.