Raynes Birkbeck

Raynes Birkbeck (b. 1956, Bronx, NY) is a self-taught artist who paints, sculpts, draws, and writes poetry. He chronicles personal and fictitious accounts with subject matter ranging from environmental issues, war, politics, and sex. Individual drawings stand alone, but when seen together, strong narratives appear, woven throughout his body of work and organized by a personalized system consisting of four concurrent dimensions. 

He has stated that “even in the most mundane and commonplace things” he feels that a “force is always present.” He finds evidence for a divine consciousness in “the fact that all things are made up of atoms and thus are created by, maintained, destroyed, resurrected, and governed by nuclear forces, states, conditions, and laws.” At times using his practice as an index of his research— for example, in a 2019 body of work, focusing on the segregation of the US military prior to 1948—his paintings are populated by historical, invented, and contemporary figures: Admiral Chester Nimitz, microbiologist Dorothy McClendon, General George S. Patton, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, members of the 761st Tank Battalion, and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. Birkbeck’s frequently figural clay sculptures directly extend the worlds built in his wall-based work, operating as dimensional avatars for corresponding painted personas. Birkbeck interprets a deeper spiritual significance in the contextual specificity of his paintings. 

Birkbeck participated in the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) art therapy program, which has also exhibited his work. He has been a long-standing member of Visual AIDS, receiving artist grants from the institution. He has shown at a number of galleries and institutions in New York, including the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, Apexart, Safe Gallery, Brooklyn, and the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division. Willow Glen Films is producing a documentary on Raynes in conjunction with his exhibition at Nino Mier Gallery, LA. He is represented by SITUATIONS, New York.