b. Millinocket Maine, 1965
Lives and Works in Old Orchard Beach, Maine

Rachael O'Shaughnessy is perhaps best known for witnessing this last decade of consecutive sunrises over the ocean, and translating them into palpable atmospheric paintings. O'Shaughnessy has a passion for the coastline as it meets the timeless and sublime, and her most recent works gel the coastal atmosphere with filaments from seaside gardens. With the weather and emotive color on her brush, she explores the poetry of their movement.

Awarded Hewnoaks Artist Colony Residencies, Vermont Studio Center Residencies, and others, O'Shaughnessy incorporates her museum instruction into her own visceral experience of nature. Bob Keyes of The Portland Press Herald has referred to her as the“ Sea Dancer”, and in recent years, sublime works by J.M. W. Turner, Albert Pinkham Ryder, and Mark Rothko cue in her passion for color and light as they meet the New England coastline.

O'Shaughnessy received a BFA with honors in painting from Maine College of Art, working with Lois Dodd, Wolf Kahn, and Johnnie Ross, in addition to independent studies in Europe. O'Shaughnsssy's numerous residencies include Vermont Studio Center, Hewnoaks, Pace House, Baie St. Marie in Nova Scotia, and Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. Her work with museums includes teaching for The Currier Museum of Art, The Farsnworth Museum, and Historic New England Museums. Her work is shown nationally,and internationally, in both public and private collections.