The captivating new cover for Synkroniciti’s upcoming “Belonging” issue is “Shelter,” by Rachael Ikins. At first glance, you might think it was a watercolor, but this painting is acrylic. “An acrylic wash is the same as a watercolor wash. I used Arches cold press paper, a full sheet, then soaked it. I diluted the paint to a consistency of watercolor and then did wet on wet. Let the whole thing dry and then drew on it.” The result combines transparency, vibrant color, and meticulous detail to produce an image that is surrealist in hue, but hyper-realistic in texture and form. Two colors, chosen at random, a bluish turquoise and a 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 the piece is the calf’s eye, 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. A sense of belonging is the result of feeling loved and cared for, and Rachael’s image captures that simple and yet undefinable Truth. Synkroniciti speaks often of humanity, but the emotional intelligence of animals often exceeds our own.
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, which debuts September 15th. The pre-order link is live at https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Rachael Ikins followed her pen into the forest as a child. As with 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.
She lost everything before she finally 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.