2nd Prize Winner, Sculpture Award 2026

Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize 2026

Rachel Ann Stevenson

Title:

“Tethered” 

Medium & Dimensions:

Bronze, 143 x 51 x 35cm

About the Artist

Rachel Ann Stevenson: In my work I try to capture the impossible: the swirling mist of a dreamer’s mind. As artists we are day dreamers and our business is capturing the impossible, holding on to it and showing it to the world. But even as we think we have a firm grip, the dream shifts and changes due to each new experience. So as we prepare to project our perfect day dream onto a canvas or through clay, it will take a mighty shift as we then influence and distort our ideal with our clumsy mark making. Let’s say the idea is represented by a wet oil painting: each time we have a new experience we smear our hands from one corner of the canvas to the other distorting our perfect image but seeing new images within the distortion that excite us as before, so by the time the painting or sculpture is complete, it is nothing like our original image. I believe this is why an artist revisits the same themes over and over as it is almost impossible to capture our own absorbing and beguiling thoughts. It’s like trying to catch mist with a net; this is what keeps me up through the night, leaping through the swirling fog of my unconscious mind with a net and a bucket, determined to return home with the impossible silence of these part imagined, part remembered places.

“Tethered”: Tethered (Valkyrie) is inspired by the 13th century Volsunga saga where the hero Sigurd discovers a sleeping Valkyrie, Brynhidr, surrounded by a ring of fire. The sculpture embodies the ethereal, untamed spirit of the Valkyries in a signature dark, surreal style.