Untitled - Mixed Media - 42 x 30 in.
Clinging Sheets, Ripped Blankets - Mixed Media on Arches Cover - 52 x 42 in.
Night Dance - Mixed Media on Rives BFK - 42 x 30 in.
Moonlight Silhouettes - Mixed Media on Rives BFK - 30 x 22 in.
Gone, October’s Breath - Mixed Media on Arches Cover - 49 x 42 in.
Dark Red Velvet - Acrylic on Arches Cover - 52 x 46 in.
Light Sky Over Protective Mother Earth - Acrylic on Arches Cover - 49 x 52 in.
Locked Motionless…Old Bones - Mixed Media on Arches Cover - 42 x 52 in.
Untitled - Mixed Media on Arches Cover - 52 x 40 in.
Atonement…Bearing Witness - Mixed Media on Arches Cover - 72 x 52 in.
Mirror, Mirror - Mixed Media on Arches Cover - 52 x 36 in.
Descending - Oil on Canvas - 48 x 48 in.
Place to Store Grief - Oil on Canvas - 42 x 42 in.
Stilled Life with Game Bags - Mixed Media on Rives BFK - 42 x 31 in.
White Tails in Sunset - Oil on Canvas - 48 x 48 in.
Treasured Triple Crowns - Pastel on Tan Rives BFK - 22 x 30 in.
Untitled - Charcoal on Rives BFK - 30 x 22 in.
Shrouded Against the Frost - Mixed Media on Tan Rives BFK - 30 x 22 in.
Joseph’s - Pastel on Tan Rives BFK - 22 x 30 in.
White Robes Stained with Scarlet - Oil on Canvas - 48 x 48 in.
Untitled - Acrylic on Canvas - 120 x 96 in.
Wild Defense - Oil on Canvas - 48 x 48 in.
Untitled - Mixed Media on Rives BFK - 30 x 22 in.
Ghostly November Memory - Mixed Media on Arches Cover - 52 x 44 in.
Cloven Trilogy - Acrylic on Arches Cover - 42 x 52 in.
Quartet - Mixed Media on Arches Cover - 36 x 52 in.
He Bagged a Pair - Mixed Media on Arches Cover - 52 x 44 in.
VISCERAL (2017 - 2021)
RaVae Luckhart returns each fall to her studio in South Dakota as her family participates in the annual hunt and harvest. After the hunt, she is drawn to the beautiful, mysterious forms which are hung to age. The life taken from the animal, sacred and respected, is celebrated and reborn in her images. She speaks of relationships, humor, fear, aloneness, defense, sacrifice and heartache, all of which mirror the human condition.
Sensing my way with an inner eye, I explore the forms to expose the universal mystery through metaphor and image to reveal the stories which communicate what is generally visible and often inexpressible. Touching on the divine, stories invite a kind of vision, giving form even to the invisible, clothing the metaphors and throwing color into the shadows. Objects such as flesh and bone assume cultural and spiritual significance reflecting values and beliefs. Attempting to unearth the mystery, I represent the story with the mark, the color and the composition. It is then, when I merge with the painting, that I understand what I am about. The result is often open-ended ambiguity, mysteriously inviting room for the viewer's interpretation. “This work is not about a deer on a hook.”
A Solo Exhibition of this work premiered at The Dahl Arts Center in Rapid City, South Dakota
September 3rd, 2021 - November 27, 2021
For more information please visit www.thedahl.org. Installation and studio photos below.
“Luckhart brings an authenticity to her subject, intimate knowledge of the butchering of animals as a farmer’s daughter and participant in the hunt. She sees beyond the sterile, plastic-wrapped offerings in the freezer aisle to the raw relationship of life and death. She’s intimate with the carnality of the body, its reduction to meat on a surgeon’s table as in a hunter’s shack, and she knows the inevitable end-game. She knows, as well, I think, the pull of faith in a God who has experienced what it means to be flesh… Luckhart—like her artistic forefathers—is fiercer than that. She is not gun shy. She faces facts head on and follows the mark. In VISCERAL, the mark led, and it led to a profound confrontation with embodiment, incarnation—with meat. And it’s hard to overstate just how good, and how powerful, these paintings are.” --Elizabeth Bryant
Download the full ESSAY HERE