An Interior-Designer-Turned-Artist In Atlanta You Need To Know

To mixed-media artist Rebecca Jack Oltmanns, vulnerability is a thing of beauty. “I’m a visual storyteller of the human spirit,” says the Atlanta-based artist known professionally as Rebecca Jack. In her previous career as an interior designer, she shares, “I loved imagining spaces for people to inhabit and creating an emotional experience for them, but art was my calling.” Come 2020, she finally committed to a studio practice. Now represented by the Atlanta Artist Collective as well as several West Coast galleries, she’s more concerned with the interior of the mind: “I’m creating imaginary worlds for viewers to fall into.” Still, traces of her design days linger as color remains Oltmanns’ greatest muse. But she gets just as excited about shape and form; her canonical heroes including Willem de Kooning, David Park, Paul Klee and Paul Gauguin. Her still lifes—often featuring vessels and fruit—invite viewers to reflect on their own interior worlds. But figurative work remains her focus, her bold forms frequently filling abstract interior scenes. More recently, she’s iterated figures in multiples—a means to highlight empathy and connection. “I don’t plan anything in advance,” reveals Oltmanns, who always works intuitively, using oils, acrylics, charcoal, collage and more. “The story unfolds with or without me; I’m just the facilitator.”