Hashimoto Contemporary is pleased to present There is no timid soul, Solo exhibition of Kansas City artist Rachel Gregor. Inspired by Emily Brontë’s 1846 poem “No coward’s soul is mine,” Rachel Gregor’s latest work explores faith without religion, resilience without certainty, and the fragile line between fear and hope.
In this poem, Brontë declares an unshakable, fearless faith in eternal things. Gregor carries on this spirit, but with one significant difference: she omits the last words, “is mine.” Where Bronte speaks with certainty, Gregor searches. The exhibition was born out of a long winter characterized by personal loss, political anxiety, relentless storms and a general sense of uncertainty. Gregor found himself questioning what it meant to make paintings when the world felt so unstable. The darkness outside the window at night became the starting point for her latest work.
The works in No Coward Soul include mixed water-based paper and oil on linen. The themes are close to home: self-portraits, her husband Eric, geraniums, garden gnomes and small household objects. Many are viewed through glass, with reflections seen in windows at night, glimpsed in mirrors, or beyond the panes. This layer of glass is both literal and figurative: a thin barrier between inside and outside, security and uncertainty, self and the outside world.
If the earlier works focused on memory and the past, this series of works proposes what it means to paint from the present tense, creating a space for visual and emotional reflection. In a world that is noisy, broken, and uncertain, No Souls Are Faint offers a moment of pause. The darkness is acknowledged, but so is the small yet enduring light within it. Rather than professing fearless faith, Gregor paints from a place of vulnerability, trying to find solace in the shared experience of not having all the answers.
