Saturday, October 21, 2006

You know Those Days When Things Just Click?

According to Vedic Astrologer, Dennis Flaherty, Mercury, Jupiter and Venus in the constellation of Libra form a variety of Saraswati Yoga in the second to third week of October. "Saraswati is the goddess of the inspirited Fine Arts." So if you haven't already reved up your creative engines, this could be a good week to get in the studio!

ROBIN ROSE
Likeness
September 16 - October 28, 2006

I went to the Hemphill Gallery this morning with the lovely Carlotta Hester to hear Robin Rose talk about his new encaustic works. This new body of work, he refers to as his terrestrial and celestial paintings. Rose is a very personable, down to earth yet eccentric artist, who considers excellence in craft a prime component of his work. He produces each piece, one at a time, without the help of studio assistants. During his talk, Rose discussed his motives for painting, the need and desire of the artist to connect with something personally meaningful. Music, sounds and life experiences are the somethings that resonate in the life of the artist and get translated to the work. His references to Jimmy Hendrick and Billie Holiday as well as his background as a musician (keyboards) with the Urban Verbs gives some insight on his love of sound and rhythm. Likeness - Rose's paintings are like mantra's where the artist enters a world of trance, like the whirling dervishes, to arrive at a point of universal connection with the divine. "I have never experienced anything else like that state of trance in painting and I want to keep experiencing it." says Rose.

Robin Rose is a contemporary master of the encaustic process, an ancient artform using beeswax and pigment. Rose uses the medium on honeycombed aluminum panels that float off the gallery walls in their worldly and other worldy rhythms and pulses. The visual sound of the paintings are part of the experience. The subtle textures and colors mesmerize the eye. Robin Rose is a man who intensely studies the world around him. His work reveals the patterns of growth and decay that he witnesses. Translucency plays a big role in his surfaces that reflect layers of painting underneath. Rose plans to mount an overhead camera and document a painting's progress in the future to reveal the hundreds of paintings underneath.

This morning's lecture brought a breath of fresh air into my psyche and I hope to hear more from this inspired and inspiring artist. It is not often enough, that I meet an artist who exudes an optimism and zest for life and creativitiy with the honest expression of this artist. When you spend time looking at his paintings, you enter the trance with the artist and stand in a space of wonder and awe. "Something is going on in the Washington Art Scene," says Rose...and that something is Robin Rose's new encaustic paintings. Don't miss this exhibition!

H E M P H I L L
1515 14th ST. N W
W A S H I N G T O N , D C
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