Raychael Stine is a painter who lives and works in Albuquerque, NM. She received her BFA at UT Dallas in 2003, and her MFA at UIC in Chicago in 2010. Raychael is currently an Associate Professor of Painting and Drawing at the University of New Mexico, where she has taught since 2013. Raychael and I are currently showing alongside each other in a 2-person show titled The Tenderness at Emma Gray HQ in Los Angeles (on view through October 5th) which features new paintings which were all made with paint that was gifted from the studio of the late and wonderful painter Susan Rothenberg. In this episode, we talk about the amazing story of how the paint came to Raychael, how she came to share the paint with me, the impact of Rothenberg on both of our work, Raychael’s process and inspirations, of which dogs are a big part of, as well as music, color, and light. Other topics include hiddenness and surprise, animals as a doorway to love, sensuality, and feeling, following your instincts, painting the interconnectedness of things, intellect vs physicality, handling criticism, a defense of tenderness and Celine Dion, Howard Hodgkins, and the ruinousness of irony.

The title of the show “The Tenderness” comes from a quote by Rothenberg: “In the paintings where it's there—the tenderness—I work for it. I'm not afraid of it. If I could put my bleeding heart in there, I would.”