Amid a pastel-hued haze of soft textures and surreal shapes, Rhea Mack’s drawings conjure dreamscapes where eccentricity flourishes. Working intuitively with colored pencils on candy-pink paper, the Massachusetts-based artist gives form to peculiar creatures — many-headed beings, flower-handed figures, and strawberry-hat wearers — who seem to emerge from her subconscious. Her world is one where whimsy reigns, and difference is embraced with a quiet, earnest charm.
Mack’s process is spontaneous and tactile, guided more by sensation than structure. She often begins with a blank sheet and an emotion or pose in mind, letting her characters evolve over the course of a Sunday morning. The materials themselves play a role in shaping her work: pink paper because it “made sense”, buttery pencils because they “feel nice”. It’s this sensory-led approach that breathes warmth into each drawing, merging technique with intuition in a way that feels both deliberate and dreamlike.
The resulting compositions shimmer with gentle chaos — floating eyes, leaping animals, and fused figures drift through layered narratives rich with stripes, dots, and tangled forms. Mack distorts familiar elements into gentle oddities, as though reshaping the natural world to accommodate new fables. Her works are more than illustrations; they are soft-spoken portals into a universe built on curiosity, kindness, and the occasional burst of bubblegum fantasy.
