Edmonton-based visual artist, Racqel Kokaram specializes in acrylic and watercolour painting. Racqel enjoys landscapes, portraits, and capturing the wonder in the everyday. Using vibrant colour, dramatic contrast, and fluid brushstrokes, her work evokes hope, nostalgia and beauty.

She believes that art has the power to change perception and heal. As you engage with art, your own narrative is unearthed. She is thrilled that her work is on display at hospitals, funeral homes and churches.

Endeavouring to use her art and her non-profit executive background to benefit the broader community, Racqel created her own platform through which all her artwork is either donated directly or proceeds from sales benefit those in need.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Strength & Serenity — Canadian Rockies

Living and working in Alberta, I am continually inspired by the strength and quiet majesty of the Canadian Rockies. There are places that quiet us the moment we arrive. The mountains are one of them. My work reflects a deep, lived relationship with the Rockies. Through a restrained, often minimalist, and abstract approach, the landscape is distilled beyond representation or tourist attraction into a soulscape. A refuge. Rather than depicting exact locations, I create an emotional and intuitive expression of place that reflect inner experience as much as external form. They are about a feeling, the moment when the noise recedes and something steadier emerges. The mountains do not demand attention. They endure. In their silence, we remember our own. I work with impasto and palette knife to build surface depth, allowing texture to echo the strength, permanence, and stability of rock and earth. The ridges of paint catch light like alpine faces at dusk. The turquoise water becomes a visual exhale. The warm gold forests against cool mountain shadows hold the tension between vulnerability and strength. In contrast, fluid acrylic paint moves freely across the surface, capturing moments of serenity, peace, and quiet breath. Together, these materials create a visual balance between grounded solidity and flowing stillness.

I want viewers to feel the terrain, not just see it, and to experience the calm and perspective that the mountains offer. These works are an invitation to pause, breathe, and reconnect with the enduring landscape around us. In a world that moves quickly and speaks loudly, these works are an offering of stillness. The horizon line, the expanse of water, the weight of the peaks; each element is composed to slow the eye and soften the breath.

Strength & Serenity reflects an ongoing dialogue between land and spirit, inviting viewers to encounter the Rockies not as scenery, but as a place of refuge, grounding, and quiet power. In this collection Racqel offers the mountains not as spectacle, but as sanctuary.