Rhed Fawell is a collage artist living and practicing in Edinburgh, Scotland. Rhed studied Fine Art at Chelsea, Middlesex University and then spent a year at the art school Cooper Union, New York. Rhed taught at the art school Kiad in Maidstone Kent and for many years taught as a senior Lecturer on the Graphics BA course at Middlesex University. Rhed spends the majority of her time in her studio space at the vibrant cultural centre Summerhall, Edinburgh. Rhed was a member at East London Printmakers in Hackney for many years and is now currently a member of Society of Scotish Artists

In 2015, Rhed founded and set up Edinburgh Collage Collective which is a non-for-profit artists community. ECC was set up to work with local and global collage artists through a process of open submission projects and collaborations.

My own work uses collage, drawing and printmaking to explore the deconstruction and reconstruction of images. This process allows me to conceptually play with a theme or thought. By deconstructing the reality of image I can then begin to tell my own story by creating a new poetical narrative. My works appear as dreamlike images in which fiction and reality meet, well-known tropes merge, and meanings shift. These multilayered images arise in which the fragility and instability of our seemingly certain reality is questioned.

The pictures create their own stories, as I develop the pieces they take on a life of their own, forming narratives that are completed in the viewer’s imagination. What the viewer reads into each image is as important as what was in my own head as I constructs them; they can be interpreted in different ways depending on who is looking at them. So what seems difficult to one person can appear beautiful to another, what is innocent in the eyes of one viewer can appear provocative or dark to another.

There are personal stories behind some of the pictures but each should then become personal to the viewer, the original narrative does not need to be specifically understood.

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