BIO
Sherah Rosen was born in Washington D.C., USA and holds a B.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a M.F.A. from Savannah College of Art & Design (2024). She has been a painter since she was a small child, and credits growing up amongst a family of artists as early inspiration. Rosen was particularly taken with abstract expressionism as a teenager, self-claiming herself as an action painter. When she is not painting she enjoys literature and playing billiards.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My paintings present contemporary renditions of the 18th-century sublime; that which is otherworldly and transcends the everyday. They showcase the historical movement’s dramatic style, that is linked to 18th-century German Idealism. The work meditates on the themes of sex, seduction and gender, including the aesthetic of the sublime (the beautiful and the grotesque). This most current body of work features hyper-sexualized, scantily clothed or nude figures of varying gender identities. I suggest that seduction is similar to the postmodern sublime because it entices one to follow a path of beauty, but can also lead an individual astray, to something that is destructive and ineffective.
The people in my paintings are looking for an escape from the mundane, they want to come to something extraordinary. With my paintings, I want to be part of a dialogue that questions the definition of sex, beauty and gender, a trajectory of progress that I believe is moving in the right direction in 2024. Inclusive to this is my own identity as a third-wave feminist, and an attempt to address the age old question,(regarding seductive portrayal) do women in fact see differently?
My technique is oftentimes rough with angst-driven, feral brushworks. The paintings are overwhelmingly painterly, tactile, and expressive.
My philosophy is that the sublime does not coincide well with Postmodernity and is ultimately unattainable, at best it is found in that of prescribed shallow spectacles. This actually leaves us feeling very lonely, and represents well the isolated nature of the 21st century human condition.
Contact Email: sherahrosen@gmail.com