Rachael Nicholson

Rachael Nicholson is currently based in Merstham, Surrey. She works part-time as an art psychotherapist. Rachael works mainly in metal, using both found objects and new materials. Her skills include welding (gas, spot and MIG), braising and blacksmithing. Her figurative pieces are inspired by wild animals and birds in motion, paying homage to their wildness, self-sufficiency and strangeness. Her abstract pieces draw from organic forms such as seed pods, as well as musical instruments and (more recently) the relationship between astronomical objects in the cosmos. Rachael uses a home-based studio for more light-weight work but relies on the well-equipped facilities at Pelham Hall at Morley College for heavier work.

Rachael is married with two daughters. She has two MA degrees; one in European Literature and the other in Art Psychotherapy. For a period, she was a sessional lecturer in Modernist literature at Birkbeck, London. When she has time, she writes stories and poems. Based in Merstham since 2015, she was brought up in Edinburgh and has lived in Oxford, Madrid, Norwich, London, Cambridge and Sutton.