Ed Rachles

Artist Statement

Cravings is an exploration of desire in its most elemental forms — the hunger we carry for connection, for place, for meaning, and for the things we reach toward when words fall short. Through mixed media collage, I excavate the layered, sometimes contradictory nature of longing itself.

Collage, as a medium, mirrors the way craving actually works in the mind: fragments accumulating and overlapping. I draw from found imagery, personal ephemera, texture, and paint — layering these materials until something new and honest emerges from the tension between them. The friction between these surfaces is intentional; cravings themselves are rarely smooth.

People, Places & Things grounds the work in the three anchors of lived experience — the faces we return to, the landscapes that hold us, the objects we imbue with feeling.

I am interested in what remains after loss, in the way desire reshapes memory, and in how we construct meaning from the scraps available to us.