Robin Rose's encaustic paintings were reviewed in the September/October 2021 issue of Home and Design Magazine.  The feature discusses Rose's approach to painting with encaustic, how music influences his work, and the word associations that lead his practice during the pandemic.

Like an alchemist at work, artist Robin Rose stirs a cauldron of hot beeswax in his inner sanctum beside Washington’s Rock Creek Park. He mixes in damar crystals derived from natural tree resin, adds carnauba wax made from the leaves of a Brazilian palm, then blends in powdered pigment of a soft rose-madder hue. “One thousand one, one thousand two,” Rose intones, expressing the brieftime it takes for the hot wax to harden.

"As a painter, Robin Rose has often followed musical cues, naming his abstractions after songs that prompted them. He works in encaustic, a mix of pigment and hot wax that requires a quick hand and whose immediacy has “a sonic quality,” he told a recent visitor to Hemphill Artworks. Yet the veteran local artist’s new “19 Paintings” hatched from text."

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CONVERSATIONS WITH ARTISTS

April 15, 6:30-8:00PM

University of Maryland Center for Art and Knowledge at The Phillips Collection

"Robin Rose (b. Ocala, Florida; lives and works in Washington, DC) creates works in encaustic mixed with pigment and wax using subtle hues to produce his abstractions. His so-called “Scriptronics” are drawings created on brown paper with a black marker connected by wire to a CD recorder. As he draws on the paper, sounds emanate from speakers. The texture of the paper and the amount of pressure applied while drawing determine the sound being recorded and played back. Rose sees his Scriptronics not only as a means of expression for artists but also as a potential therapeutic tool for those with autism or dementia.

He will be joined in conversation by Vesela Sretenović, Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, The Phillips Collection."

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"Robin Rose is an adroit artist of his generation with a unique art form. His work is the essence of a cosmic curiosity and his profound observation of nature, as he constantly discovers the riches of nature around him. His muse is the bountiful domain of rocks and pebbles, rivers and springs that inspires him to create. Robin applies a specific technique to each paintings, that he prepares with patience as he does on a journey to an unknown destination. His untamed approach provides him an unlimited scope of imagination and desire for discovery that not only transcends his art beyond the ordinary, but it also demands a deeper appreciation and interpretation from his audience."

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Curated by Jack Rasmussen

American University Museum at the Katzen Art Center, Washington DC

February 16 – August 9, 2021

"The American University Museum recently acquired 9,000 works from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, a Washington institution that closed its doors to the public in 2014. Together with our Watkins Collection we have an especially strong cache of works by Washington regional artists. While curating a show of Washington paintings drawn from our growing collections, I became interested in how my memories of a formative time in my life might be affecting my choice of artwork for this exhibition.

Every exhibition is an opportunity to address what we can see of the past from our contemporary perspective. My perspective includes the acknowledgement of persistent, systemic gender and racial injustice, bias, and violence that was present in the fifties, laid bare in the sixties, and continues to the present day. It is clear to me that the defining characteristic of most White mainstream art made between 1957 and 1982 in Washington was an adherence to aesthetic and commercial constraints that encouraged artists to remain silent when their voices are most needed. What pushback there was against this tendency was led by Black and women artists, whose work has been systematically underrepresented in the collections of Washington museums."

– Jack Rasmussen, Curator

Featuring Artists: Cynthia Bickley-Green, Lisa Montag Brotman, Allen Carter, Michael Clark, Manon Cleary, Robert D’Arista, Rebecca Davenport, Gene Davis, Willem de Looper, Jeff Donaldson, Thomas Downing, William S. Dutterer, Alan Feltus, Fred Folsom, Robert Franklin Gates, Sam Gilliam, Carol Brown Goldberg, Tom Green, Helene McKinsey Herzbrun, Michal Hunter, Val Lewton, Howard Mehring, William Newman, Kenneth Noland, Robin Rose, Joseph Shannon, Frank Anthony Smith, Carroll Sockwell, Alma Thomas, Franklin White, William Woodward, and Kenneth Victor Young.

View the exhibition and catalogue online in Museum@Home.

CONVERSATIONS WITH ARTISTS

April 15, 6:30-8 PM

University of Maryland Center for Art and Knowledge at The Phillips Collection

"Robin Rose (b. Ocala, Florida; lives and works in Washington, DC) creates works in encaustic mixed with pigment and wax using subtle hues to produce his abstractions...He will be joined in conversation by Vesela Sretenović, Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, The Phillips Collection.

The Conversations with Artists series provides an opportunity for the DC community and University of Maryland students to hear from leading and emerging artists in an informal setting."

Click here to register.