Threads of Memory
Rachel Wolfe
Threads of Memory [detail] 2025
Portrait of Rachel Wolfe and Margaret Price (deceased grandmother 2022)
Oil on canvas
70 x 60 cm
About the Artwork
In Threads of Memory, remembering becomes an act of gathering fragments and stitching them into a new fabric of memory. The painting draws on recollections of time spent at my grandparents’ chamferboard home in Ipswich, Queensland, exploring memory as layered, partial and shaped as much by forgetting as by remembering. I place myself beside my young grandmother, stepping into family history through a combination of remembered and imagined elements. Knitting and red yarn suggest care, continuity and repair; symbolic objects such as the elephant, cauliflower and paper-doll dress allude to long memory, family roots and shifting identities; while the taped child figure and castle-like roofline hint at how childhood memories are pieced together, altered and mythologised over time. By choosing myself as the sitter alongside my grandmother, I reclaim the scene as an adult, honour her warmth and steadiness, and reassert a sense of belonging in the present.
About the Artist
Rachel Wolfe is an emerging artist based in Hobart, Tasmania. She is currently completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Visual Arts) at the University of Tasmania, and in 2026, she was the recipient of the Jon Lajos Prize in Fine Arts, UTAS. She also holds a Diploma of Visual Arts and Certificate III in Visual Arts from TAFE Cairns, North Queensland. Her developing practice centres on painting and drawing, using figurative subjects and layered symbolism to create quietly allegorical works and often engages with themes of memory, identity, trauma and history. Rachel won the 2025 Poochibald Art Prize and has been a finalist in several art prizes. Her work is held in private collections in Australia and overseas. Alongside her studio practice, she undertakes commissioned portraiture through Endear Portraiture.