Rachel Bensimon is a Canadian-born artist based in New York City whose paintings explore memory, girlhood, and the inner life through a lens of psychological symbolism and surreal intimacy. Working in oil, she creates emotionally resonant portraits of girls and young women, often accompanied by dolls, animals, and symbolic objects—each piece a quiet ritual, a visual spell, or a whispered fragment of an untold story.
From a young age, Rachel turned to drawing as a source of solace and self-expression. That early instinct evolved into a lifelong devotion to visual storytelling. She studied for over a decade at The Art Students League and later earned her MFA at the New York Academy of Art. During her early career, she also worked as a makeup artist in the fashion world, collaborating with top photographers and publications in Paris and New York—a background that continues to inform her sensitivity to form, detail, and atmosphere.
Much of Rachel’s practice is autobiographical, drawing from childhood memories and emotional landscapes shaped by loss, resilience, and a longing for belonging. Her visual language blends classical technique with a contemporary pop-surrealist aesthetic, drawing inspiration from artists like Balthus, Joseph Cornell, Goya and Mark Ryden. Whether portraying a solitary girl in a dreamlike interior or a tender moment with a beloved animal, each painting reflects her fascination with the threshold between innocence and knowing, between the seen and the secret.
Her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows across the United States including Brassworks Gallery, Modern Eden Gallery, and the L.A. Art Show. She continues to build a visual mythology rooted in healing, memory, and the sacred in the everyday.