Rainey Straus

Artist Statement / Bio

Through paintings, photographs, and sculptures, I collaborate with the more-than-human world to reveal the hidden stories that connect us.

I create paintings, photographs, and sculptures as a way to listen to the more-than-human world. Walking, sensing, and spending time in specific places shape my process, revealing the entanglements between humans and nature and the surprising narratives that pass between species. Recent projects include The Old Growth Project, inspired by coastal redwoods—where trees become land, sky, mountain, stream, fish, and animals—and Spinning Time into Form, which extends this inquiry into matter as action, boundaries, and the flow of phenomena through cast paper and compostable bioplastic sculpture. Spinning Time into Form will be shown at Gallery Route One in Point Reyes Station, California, in the spring of 2026.

The Old Growth Project has been featured at the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, The Forest Unseen at the Petaluma Arts Center, Ecoartspace’s The New Geologic Epoch, and Art & Ecology at the O’Hanlon Center for the Arts. I have been an artist-in-residence at the Morris Graves Foundation, Lucid Art Foundation (2024), and the BigCi Environmental Residency in Australia (2025). Past exhibitions include Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the San Jose Museum of Art, and the Design Exchange Museum in Toronto. My work has appeared in Dark Mountain Journal, Sculpture Magazine, and Rhizome. I hold a BFA in Painting from SUNY Purchase and an MFA in Sculpture from California College of the Arts.

Artist Social

• Instagram: rainey.straus
• LinkedIn: raineystraus