Artist Bio: Rebecca Riel

One of Rebecca's greatest loves is to create worlds and bring them to life. As a native Santa Barbaraian, she grew up surrounded by both the vistas and intricacies of nature. Rebecca's love of Natural Science led her to a career first in traditional Scientific Illustration, and later as technologies evolved, to high end 3D computer art and animation.

Her art is often a study in contrasts. Rebecca has a great love for the open expanses of the western sky and these are often subjects of her traditional work -- to the other extreme of the minutia of insect patterns or the accurate depiction of native wildflowers. Both extremes have in common a love of light and texture, drawing the viewer into the piece.

When Rebecca works in 3D (she is also a full time 3D Senior Artist and Animator), she loves the ability to create something that may or not exist in this world and breathe life into it. Her traditional art skills -- the ability to see light and shadow, color, shape -- intertwine with the computer as an art tool in ways that neither one can do alone. Traditional painting and sculpture both help her in her daily work and give her the opportunity for her own personal creativity.

Rebecca is very much drawn to the early California Impressionists, with their love of light, rich colors that combine for a heightened realism. She enjoys this style because it is a delicious counterpoint to her highly technical day-to-day illustration tasks. This site celebrates the artist's traditional Southwest and California landscapes with their expansive vistas, many of which include the changeable nature of light. She strives to capture the brisk feeling of an incoming storm, the smell of far-away places in the wind, the rain in distant sage. She loves the quality and changing light that clouds bring, they add richness and depth to the horizon.