The subjects of my work and the materials used have evolved over the decades of my practice, but there are some consistencies. My work often relates to the traditions of Still Life. It is usually structured in a grid, (sometimes obvious, sometimes not), and there are usually elements of pattern and decoration in my presentation. (These characteristics are often associated with the work of women artists.)

My subjects are taken from my concerns as an artist living in the world. They can be as close to me as my kitchen, and as distant as the politics of the Middle East.

Artist’s Statement Courtesy of Thelma Rosner

A Portrait of Thelma Rosner by Madeline Lennon

Thelma Rosner’s art is, in many respects, an intellectual self-portrait. Her paintings reflect an intense and intelligent engagement with literature, with historical situations, and with challenging current political realities. On the other hand, her works also present complex meditations on women’s lives, tracing feminist awareness of their limits and possibilities.

The poet Molly Peacock described the artist as “a thinking sensualist.”* This seems exactly right. Several different series of paintings take beautifully painted food items as the apparent subject. For example, the seven panels of Andalusia (2001-2002) are brilliantly coloured and patterned settings for still life representations of fruits and vegetables depicted at the centre of each panel. Rosner here evokes the medieval period in Spanish history when different cultural groups lived in peace – Christian, Jewish and Muslim people – in contrast with the conflicts experienced later. The abstract red and gold decorative patterns recall Spanish architectural detail of the period. Along the top and bottom of each panel, Arabic and Hebrew names identify the pictured foods, a parallel that reappears in a number of works, such as Arab/Palestinian Dictionary (2009-2011). The importance of food as a significant cultural marker shared by the two groups suggests the potential for an enriched life when cultures co-exist positively.

References to women’s work appear throughout Rosner’s production: food preparation, quilting, rug weaving, and even diapering (Soak Stain Piece, 1977). Her constructions are often based on a grid, strictly or loosely fashioned, informing the overall impression of a given painting. This is the case for early works such as Housework (1978) and Celtic Series (1979-1981), and more recent paintings like Cross-Stitch (2011-2012). However, to describe the paintings in the Cross-Stitch series as based on a grid is much too simplistic given the artist’s complex techniques. In this case, she began by pouring paint across a large canvas and then worked through the vivid colours with strokes mimicking the embroidered cross-stitch. Although the references are to traditional women’s work of making rugs and needlepoint, the images she embeds in the designs are jet planes, rockets, helicopters, flowers, houses, boats, bombs, machine guns – evoking a complicated contemporary existence. Beauty and terror combine in these entrancing large-scale paintings.

How to characterize the artistic production of Thelma Rosner? Consistently strong and challenging, her paintings and prints provoke a viewer to look more deeply to decipher the images and constructions. The sheer beauty of the painting, the obvious care with which it is created, draws us in, and then it is up to us to work out the message the artist has embedded there.

Let me close this tribute on a personal note. One of my favourite Thelma Rosner paintings is She is lost forever (1992), one of a group of paintings dedicated specifically to female experience, and referencing literature by women authors. In this case, the title is a quotation from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. This is a spectacular painting in the form of a triptych, three panels that play together and with brilliant colours, especially red. In the centre, arranged vertically, are three related representations: a detail of an oriental carpet; the cropped (headless) figure of a woman whose costume suggests the Elizabethan queen holding a prayer book; and a detail of the medieval Unicorn tapestry. Here we have a representation of chastity (despite the suggestive thrust of the unicorn horn upward toward the ‘virgin queen’). In contrast, the two large side panels of this triptych are loose abstractions, sensual, colourful and suggestive of passionate abandon.  Even if one did not ‘get’ the specific references to the medieval tapestry or the costumed woman, the contrast between the tightly constricted (and meticulously painted) centre panels, and the wildness of the flanking panels, the idea of patriarchal domination and restriction of the female as opposed to the internal desires of women, is a loud trumpet call.

*Molly Peacock, “Thelma Rosner: a thinking sensualist”, in Seen and Unseen. Marion Drysdale, Thelma Rosner, Gerald Vaandering (McIntosh Gallery, 2003), n.p.