Synkroniciti is delighted to welcome back visual artist, poet and writer Rachael Ikins from New York state, this time as our cover artist! Her acrylic wash painting Shelter won our “Belonging” contest. Rachael combines transparency, vibrant color, and meticulous textured detail to produce an image that is surrealist in hue, but hyper-realistic in texture and form. Two colors, chosen at random, turquoise and red come together. Photography brings out blue and red–no, it’s not a political statement–but in person it reads generally pink. A mother elephant curls her trunk lovingly around her calf.
The focal point of Shelter is the calf’s expressive eye. Rachael was inspired by visits to Siri, an elephant at the Rosamund Gifford Zoo in Syracuse that Rachael has known for most of her life. “I will never forget her eye and how soft her skin was, the long lashes. The forgiveness, compassion, and patience of other living things for our human frailties is boundless. I strive to capture my own belongingness when I draw or paint them.” The love and respect Rachael holds for her fellow creatures is revealed in the rendering of every wrinkle and echoes the palpable love and tenderness of the mother elephant for her baby. We belong when we feel safe and cared for, and mothers are the first to have the opportunity to build our sense of belonging, although we have not all known the tenderness this elephant shows.
In order to create the cover, “Shelter” has been zoomed and cropped–it is taller than it is wide–but you can see the whole piece inside Synkroniciti’s “Belonging” issue, Vol. 6, No.3, available at https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Rachael Ikins followed her pen into the forest as a child. As happened to Gretel in the Grimm Brothers’ tale, a wicked witch forced her to reroute through valleys so dark she doubted the existence of the sun at times. A fabulous wizard held her heart in his hand. They fell in love. He urged her to release poetry from her soul.
She lost everything before she understood her truth: write like a motherfucker, write or die. For poetry was the constant through all storms, the beloved she refused to relinquish.
She won some prizes, published in journals and then books. When last seen Ikins was feeding pickled jalapeños to a large dragon perched on the roof of her house—a dragon who bestowed her name upon Ikins’s cat. Sister souls of fire and passion.