Colleen Rasmussen

Colleen Rasmussen paints in a loft in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, where she works with the windows open to the sound of passing trains. Before she turned to the canvas full time, she spent ten years as a stage lighting technician, hanging lights for theater after earning a BA in Theater Design from Columbia College Chicago. Those years taught her how a single warm beam can make a cool space glow, and that lesson sits at the heart of everything she paints.

Her abstract expressionist works are built from thick, knife-laid slabs of oil mixed with impasto medium on deep-edge canvas. Hot orange cuts against cobalt and teal, and scraped edges and raised ridges catch the light as it moves across the room. The result is a surface you want to walk up to and study. These bold, textured pieces bring warmth and energy to a modern living room, a loft-style dining area, an entryway or a home office that needs a strong focal point. Below are Rasmussen’s canvases in our shop, ready to hang.