Hi my Chicly friend! I see you have found yourself Off the Beaten path. My name is Rebecca DeVries, most people call me Becka. I live and create my artwork in the beautiful state of Wisconsin.

    I’ve been creative all my life and even as a kid I always had to have my paper and pencils, you know, like every color-colored pencil I could find! So, it’s probably no surprise I found myself attending the University of Wisconsin - Whitewater, for what I thought was going to be a degree in graphic design.  However, by the end of my third year I discovered that I wasn’t so enthusiastic about becoming a graphic designer. With the nudge of some wonderfully supportive professors I changed my major. It wasn’t quite the cakewalk that it sounds though.  There were several intense reviews of my artwork, a lot of sleepless nights and many many tears shed.  Then in 2013 I graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts with an emphasis in painting, and feeling completely burnt out and not so inspired. 

    After graduation I found my way to Madison, Wisconsin.  For the next few years I worked several different entry level jobs that mostly involved sitting at a desk all day.  I would create something here and there but never truly felt inspired while at the same time having a gnawing feeling that I was supposed to be doing something else.  Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore and I handed in my two weeks and looked for any kind of work that would be more artistic and autonomous.  That’s when I found my current place of employment. Where I work as a Stone Cutter/Shop Forewoman for a family owned memorials company.  It has been a wonderful place to work, where I can put my skills to use while working with other creatives and having great flexibility and encouragement to pursue my own artistic endeavors.  

I would describe myself mostly as a geometric line artist as well as a painter.  My drawings are first drawn in pencil and end as an ink drawing or a print.  Painting mediums I enjoy working with are watercolor and acrylic, and I sometimes find pleasure in combining these different mediums.  The majority of my subject matter would be animals of all kinds; mammals, insects, aquatic life, etc. Though I enjoy all subjects that when observed and their essence is truly felt can ground us in the present moment and remind us of who we truly are.  Things like nature and music for example.  Over the past several years I feel I have really found my own personal style within my work.  For quite a while, though I was very much enjoying it and felt as though I had found my niche, I didn’t truly understand why I was making what I was making.      

    Then towards the end of 2021 and most of 2022 I had what one could only describe as a spiritual transformation.  This changed a lot for me as far as how I view the world and myself in it.  It also changed my understanding of creativity and inspiration and where it comes from.  You see, I always used to believe that creative inspiration came from the outer world around us and the thoughts I would have towards it.  I used to look for inspiration everywhere and then try to think of cool ideas.  Sometimes, this would work.  However, this transformation has shown me that creative inspiration isn’t found outside of us.  It comes from within.  Creativity is found in the flow state not from the struggle of our minds.  When we relax and allow, the ideas come, the inspirations come.  So, now I create as the expression of the creator within me. 

   Creating my geometric line drawings is not unlike ourselves and the world around us.  It’s similar to the dualistic world we inhabit.  One, in the dualistic nature of the drawing being black and white.  The second way being that the individual shapes are a representation of our separateness or at least the illusion of separateness.  But, as you step back and look you see that each piece makes up the whole.  Each shape or line represents a part of the oneness of the image, as we individually are a piece of the oneness of who we truly are. The oneness of life. 

    It is my intention to evoke the viewer with a feeling of peace, curiosity, and harmony through observing the journey of the materials to their final states.  Finding a piece of themselves in the art and feeling the connectedness that the work induces between us, artist and viewer, as well as themselves to the greater whole.