British-born artist Rachel Lumsden creates primarily large-format figurative paintings characterised by intensely atmospheric, pictorial spaces. Her imagery coalesces on the canvas through a virtuoso handling of paint, evoking visual narratives that come unexpectedly close and yet cannot be entirely grasped.
 In her book Igniting Penguins, Lumsden invites the reader on an entertaining excursion into the art world and to the core of painting itself. Along the way we are introduced to some of its powerful and quirky gatekeepers, we are baffled by art’s apparently unshakeable gender roles, and we discover what makes figurative painting the sexy form of quantum physics. Lumsden’s essay is both a personal manifesto and a survey of today’s art scene. Above all, it is a blazing confession to the art of for painting.
                                                  Rachel Lumsden, born 1968 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, has been living and working in Switzerland since 2002. She studied visual art at Nottingham Trent University and the Royal Academy Schools in London and taught painting at Lucerne School of Art and Design 2007 –19.