Born and raised in New Orleans, Rayne Housey Bories has painted for as long as she can remember. She studied history and art history at Tulane University, then earned a Master's in Preservation Studies—training that taught her to read the past and the techniques to restore it. That education led her to train in the studio of a world-renowned decorative finisher and historic restoration specialist, where she mastered centuries-old techniques: gilding, layering, and surface work, which now inform her paintings and backgrounds.

Rayne draws on the visual language of history—classical portraiture, fragments of Greek statuary, the delicate forms of Louisiana’s native birds and insects—and then deliberately disrupts it. A flash of citrus, a splash of color, a strip of gold leaf, a checkerboard pattern: playful interventions that keep the work from feeling overly serious. Her paintings are a conversation between past and present, tradition and instinct, structure and joy.