Lena Rushing
For decades, Lena Rushing has built a body of work centered on the complexity of women’s lives— exploring identity, gender roles, domestic expectations, celebration, influence, oppression, and strength. Her paintings often inhabit a charged psychological space where symbolism and narrative intertwine: predators stand in for threat and power, doubled figures evoke identity and duplicity, and heroines confront danger with defiance, vulnerability, and control. Across the years, Rushing’s work has consistently celebrated women who resist containment—figures that are rebellious, self-possessed, and emotionally layered.
Her practice has evolved through numerous exhibitions, including presentations at the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art; Sullivan Goss – An American Gallery in Santa Barbara; La Luz de Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles; and regional venues throughout California’s Central Coast. In 2014, she also curated Powerful Women, a group exhibition honoring feminist icons and amplifying the voices of female artists—an ethos that continues to shape her work today.
The current body of work, developed over the past two years, marks a period of material and conceptual experimentation. Rushing revisits long-standing themes through a supernatural lens, creating figures that transcend stereotype and prescribed identity. Moving beyond roles of motherhood or sexuality, these women inhabit spaces of mysticism, spirituality, and the ethereal. Religious artifacts, occult aesthetics, and imagined transcendental architecture converge, inviting viewers into a realm between reality and magic—where women emerge as otherworldly presences, forces, and gods.
At its core, Rushing’s work is an act of emotional translation. Painting allows her to process the intensity of contemporary life and personal experience, transforming interior landscapes into vivid, symbolic forms. She hopes the work sparks curiosity and creative courage in viewers—especially those who feel they “can’t make art”—as a reminder that art can begin simply by revealing what’s inside.
Outside the studio, she spends her time hiking, petting dogs, picking fights with Trump supporters, and occasionally wreaking havoc—always returning to the deeply personal, restorative act of making.