Rebecca Bangs
Maple Grove, MN
Minnesota artist Rebecca Bangs creates vibrant pointillism and game-inspired paintings rooted in nature, memory, joy, and slow looking.
Message
Rebecca E. Bangs is a Minnesota-based artist creating vibrant pointillism, contemporary realism, and game-inspired paintings rooted in nature, memory, play, and perception. She earned her MFA in Painting with honors from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, where her thesis series, Game Night, explored tabletop games as systems of recognition, nostalgia, and implied participation.
Rebecca’s artistic path began at Bard College in upstate New York, where she studied with Laura Battle and Alan Cote. Her varied background, including Army service, long-haul trucking, nursing, and years of advanced art study, gives her work a grounded and observant point of view. Across her paintings, she is drawn to color, structure, and the quiet pleasure of looking closely. Her work invites viewers into moments of nature, play, and visual discovery.
Statement
My paintings explore nature, play, memory, and perception through pointillism, contemporary realism, and game-inspired imagery. I am drawn to images that feel familiar from a distance but slowly reveal their structure up close through repeated marks, layered color, and visible texture.
In my pointillism work, small brushstrokes build into nature-inspired images that reward slow looking. In my Game Nightseries, familiar tabletop games become systems of recognition and implied participation. The players are often absent, but their presence is suggested through the arrangement of pieces, boards, and objects.
Across my work, I am interested in the space between recognition and discovery. I want each painting to offer both an immediate image and a slower visual experience that continues to unfold.