Invitation to Voyage: The Paintings of Laura Von Rosk
By Mirror Staff
Saturday, February 19, 2011
As the Lake George Arts Project’s gallery director, Laura Von Rosk reviews hundreds of slides each year from artists hoping for a show at the Courthouse Gallery.
But she’s also an artist in her own right, and the mythic, archtypal landscapes that have won her prestigious fellowships and grants and exhibitions appear untouched by the trends influencing her contemporaries.
Some of her work was on view at Art in the Public Eye’s Gallery 99 show, which was installed in Glens Falls’ Empire Theater from February 10 through February 13. Although she’s lived in the Adirondacks since the late 1990s, Von Rosk says her paintings are not necessarily rooted in the landscapes of the region.
“I used to think these paintings were about specific places, and in many ways this is true,” she says. “But I notice there are forms repeating. It seems I now look for places that are already in my head. I can still say I work from memory, but I’m not sure where the original memory comes from.”
Von Rosk began painting landscapes while still living and working in New York.
“After a trip to Maine, my senses were reawakened; I just wanted to get out of the city, to become engaged with nature,” she says. “My first landscapes were painted from the memory of that trip.”
Those first landscapes were denser, more detailed, with more textured surfaces than recent work, she says.
Her work today has more highly finished surfaces, and is cooler. That in itself may be a reflection of living in the Adirondacks.
“Something of your physical environment, how you live in the world, seeps into your work,” she concedes.
People frequently “read” Von Rosk’s paintings, as though she is trying to tell them a story.
“I have no interest in determing what people’s response to the work should be,” Von Rosk says. “But light, color, shape, can’t help but to evoke feelings. The paintings’ deep space draws you in; there’s something familiar about the landscape. You’re at the edge of being allowed in. No; I’m inviting you in.”
| 1 | COMMENT | + Add a Comment |
© 2012 Adirondack Resorts Press, Inc.
Laura, I saw pictures of your paintings awhile back and was drawn to them…They have a certain element of magic and mystique about them…..as if a Wizard should be amongst their space…..Thank You For Sharing…….