I'm Rachel, the maker behind Mountain Tree Studios. I work in handcrafted metalwork jewelry and mixed-media/metal leaf paintings, and the question underneath both is the same: how do you make something that genuinely connects?

My jewelry draws on ancient and cross-cultural symbolism — forms that appear across civilizations and time — because I find it quietly extraordinary that human beings have always reached for the same kinds of meaning.

My paintings use reflective metal leaf and mica to mimic how light behaves in the natural world — how it shifts across a landscape depending on the hour, the season, and where you're standing. So the work literally changes with the light in the room and the person standing in front of it.

Two different materials, one instinct.