1989
Read more about the background and inspiration behind this collection here.
Introducing: Rebecca Rebouché 1989
October 2016
Starboard, acrylic on canvas, 12" x 9"
This image is the "cover" image for the collection which will be included with the body of work. I based the painting off of a combination of the two cover images from the Taylor Swift 1989, and the Ryan Adams 1989 Cover album which both included seagulls. I added a sailboat and named it "Starboard" because I liked the reference to the driver of the vessel. The right side of a sailing vessel was originally called "starboard" because it is the side from which the boat is steered. I thought it a nice metaphor for the navigation required of each of us as we sail on such deep waters as ourselves.
This Love, acrylic on canvas, 24" x 20"
Number 11 on the album: This Love
I wanted to paint this sunken ship almost like a ghost that's still alive. It's at the bottom of the ocean, and you wouldn't know it, except that it's flying that kite which resembles a playing card and dangling from it is a golden key. The key is almost close enough to shore to grab it, but the ship (and the love it represents) is so far away. A memory really. So it is, with that kind of love, that comes and goes, is good and bad, comes back from the dead, but is broken.
Wildest Dreams, acrylic on canvas, 40" x 30"
Number 9 on the album: Wildest Dreams
This piece is about how the memories of a past relationship can follow you around, and tempt you back with delicate strings that pull on you somewhere deep. The fires that first made the flame are the ones that will destroy you if you stay too long in the landscape of dreams. “You see me in hindsight tangled up with you all night, burn it down. Someday when you leave me, I bet these memories follow you around.” It’s all there in the song. When I painted the final flame, I knew it captured the dichotomy of heartache and allure I was going for.
How You Get the Girl, acrylic on canvas, 40” x 30"
Number 10 on the album: How You Get the Girl
The imagery in this piece has personal significance for me, but I'm confident the message is universal. This song and this painting is about the gestures of courtship. It's about the way you feel when you feel like you would do anything to prove your magnetism and devotion. How you get the girl: you go and get the moon and stars, all the constellations, the infinite blue night, and you bring them to her. The night is as blue as you have been without her, and her face is the moon. When the moon is gone, the night is a terrifying abyss. But when the moon waxes, the night seems to smile again.
Welcome to New York, acrylic on canvas, 24" x 18”
Number 1 on the album: Welcome to New York
This painting is about more than just New York City. It’s about New York as a state of mind. The song references moving to the big city to become who you always dreamed, and being free to shine bright. I wanted this painting to have a childlike shadow-box effect that reminds you the world is a stage, and you can be the main character in your own story. New York as a metaphor means you don’t hold back, you become your best possible self and you light up the night.
Style, acrylic on canvas, 24" x 18"
Number 3 on the album: Style
This painting is about a love that exists inside a glass bottle of infinite time, where the ocean never ends, the skies are forever blue, and the stories you’ve rooted there are deep enough to last lifetimes. Danger might loom outside, red flags wave wildly on the horizon, but the canopy of branches that cork your world seem enough to keep you sailing on forever. This big ship is a bond that never goes out of style.
Bad Blood, acrylic on canvas, 36" x 48"
Number 8 on the album: Bad Blood
This painting uses archetypal imagery to capture universal feelings of tension, betrayal, and reaching a point of no return. With references to Eden, and fruit of knowledge and serpents of evil, the painting captures the spirit of “Bad Blood” on the 1989 album. There is room for interpretation and speculation as to who did what in this story, and where the line between right and wrong really falls. For me this painting is about the struggle we all face in trying to do what’s best for ourselves. The two sides in this story are essentially existing inside one person. The Bad Blood can be the way you come to know something you didn’t know before, and that can’t be undone. The bad blood is the self-knowledge that means you can’t go back to the way it was before.
All You Had To Do Was Stay, acrylic on canvas, 18" x 24"
Number 5 on the album: All You Had To Do Was Stay
This painting takes on a surrealist style to illustrate a line from my journal where I wrote “I built a nest in my heart but the bird left long ago.” The same rings true in the song. “Had me in the palm of your hand…” The blue skies you thought you saw out there were an umbrella I made to protect us from the storms. The love you thought you wanted was right here all along. You left because you thought the storms were in me, but the storms go wherever you go. All you had to do was stay, for one more day, and the day after that and the day after that. I remember when you lost that umbrella with the clouds on the subway. We borrowed another from the hotel lobby and you left it on the streets of New York. No matter how many umbrellas I found for your storms, you still thought the blue skies were somewhere out there. Where are your blue skies now? “It could have been easy, all you had to do was stay.”
I Know Places, acrylic on linen, 24" x 18"
Number 12 on the album: I Know Places
This painting is about the relationship that you feel would work out in the end if you could just find some place to get away. When it seems like haters are clouding the skies over your hearts, it's clear that "love is a fragile little flame, it could burn out." It's about that feeling, of being on the run with someone you love. The feeling that united, you could go anywhere, and survive there together. Even the scariest woods would be safer than being out in the open, vulnerable to attack. Not the real kind of attack our ancestors knew, but the kind that comes today, in the form of rumors, social media messes, lies and toxic speculation. If you could just run, away from real life, if you could just be together, you might just have a chance.
"You know for me, it's always you... And I know for you, it's always me."
For me this painting also captures the feeling that I sometimes get when I'm trying to be brave. Sometimes to be brave, I first have to go and hide. I build up my inner courage, and then return to the world blazing with my iron shield in hand. I Know Places where I can hide, where I can grow armor in the night, where I can wake to the forest and choose when it's time to fight. I painted this painting in one of those places – In my scary safe woods, where I became strong enough to share it with the world. If you can metaphorically outrun criticism and damaging negativity, you are finally Onto Something. "Let them say what they want, we won't hear it."
"They are the hunters, we are the foxes. And we run!"
Blank Space, mixed media on canvas, 48" x 48"
Number 2 on the album: Blank Space
This painting is about the complicated nature of perception after the battlefield of a relationship has run it’s course. The quest for true love is often full of extremes, and it’s those times of triumph and defeat that become the story we tell. “So it’s gonna be forever, or it’s gonna go down in flames.” We take sides and push the envelope, trying to prove it’s one way or another, hero or villain? Which one will you be this time? Each new love is a chance to start the game over. We go into battle half-knowing that our ally will become our enemy, eventually. The irony for me always lies in the fact that with each new partner, we blindly declare a bond from the start, and charge headstrong into the front lines. When the tables turn, the clouds become swamps, and one of us walks away with the bleeding heart.
“Love’s a game, do you wanna play?”
Clean
It's often the stories we tell ourselves that are the most frightening. I'm laying them to rest so they may join the faithful departed. Fly from me dear ghosts. I want to be free. This painting is about how the process of getting over lost love feels like the bottom has been washed out from under you, your roots are exposed for all to see.
“When I was drowning, that’s when I could finally breathe.”
I Wish You Would
This song is all about all the things you wish you or the other person had done differently in a relationship. Only with hindsight can you truly see what was so special about it. My painting for this song is extremely personal and specific to my own memories. This tree holds everything I wished for. A place for hopes to live on, in memory.
“I wish you knew that, I’ll never forget you as long as I live.”
Out of the Woods
I live in a treehouse in the woods of South Louisiana where I painted this piece. There is much that can be said about that house, the long journey to getting “out of the woods”. But instead I’ll leave it with just this owl to speak for me.
“The monsters turned out to be just trees.”
1989 was exhibited at Parasol Projects, NYC in November 2016. Select pieces from the collection are available as prints in the Atelier.
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