Rashaun Rucker
WORKS ON PAPER
This selection of studies offers a closer look at the foundational ideas and visual language behind American Ornithology, Rashaun Rucker’s ongoing exploration of identity, incarceration, and surveillance.
Rooted in the symbolic merging of pigeons and Black male figures, American Ornithology interrogates systems of confinement - both physical and psychological - while drawing on historic texts, personal narratives, and urban ecology. These studies reveal Rucker’s iterative process: gestural marks, experimental compositions, and raw visual juxtapositions that ultimately inform the larger body of work.
Presented here as standalone pieces, each study contains its own quiet intensity - evidence of a practice that is as investigative as it is intuitive.
Studies
Prints and Collage
I Long to be Amongst the Clouds
Rashaun Rucker
Carbon pencil on acrylic spray paint on water color paper
30 x 22 inches
Toe on the Red Line
Rashaun Rucker
Carbon pencil on acrylic spray paint on water color paper
30 x 22 inches
Will the Circle be Unbroken, 2023 • Graphite and colored pencil on Stonehenge paper • 50 x 35 inches
Call and Response, 2023 • Mixed media and tambourine • Diameter: 8 inches
When Grace Was Sufficient and a House Was a Home, 2023 • Mixed media and cross • 10 x 6 inches
Make a Joyful Noise, 2023 • Mixed media and tambourine • Diameter: 8 inches
Waiting on Salvation, 2023 • Graphite and colored pencil on Stonehenge paper • 50 x 35 inches
In My Father's House There are Many Mansions, 2023 • Graphite and colored pencil on Stonehenge paper • 50 x 35 inches
What Grandma Told Me, 2023 • Hymnal board and mixed media • 33 x 18 inches
What Aunt Tump Told Me, 2023 • Hymnal board and mixed media • 33 x 18 inches
You Don't Have to go to Church to Get to Know Your God, 2023 • Baptismal font, lenticular print and mixed media • 34 x 24 inches
I Brought You Black Flowers Because You are Beautiful, 2023 • Mixed media and holy fount • 18 x 12 inches
RASHAUN RUCKER
Ink on paper
12 × 18 inches