Eileen de Rosas
“Material Lineage” Exhibition Feature
-
I engage with routine aspects of daily life with intentionality to reveal the sublime in everyday experiences. Combining close observation through walking and studio practice, I seek to induce the experience of a heightened state in the viewer. Rather than searching for grand vistas as subject matter, I alter scale to embrace intimacy and invite interaction.
Combining a hereditary visual deficit with an interest in the liminal spaces between urban and natural, I create layered, shifting series’ of images, referencing the movement of the body through these spaces. With a rectangular composition referencing both the phone frame and the picture plane, my work invites the viewer to enter that space, by overlaying images of the outer world with the intense emotions of the inner self.
In the Scenes from a Walk series, I documented daily walks for over a year, transformed the
photos into layered digital collages, then printed the images on fabric or projected them. Though I could have walked anywhere, I consistently traveled to peripheral spaces: edges of unnoticed boundaries, areas of ignored, unpruned abundance, where life grows wild and neglected.
My belief in the interconnectedness of people and place drives this work. By paying attention to the intimate connection of my body with the landscape, I maintain that the sublime exists in mundane, unidealized places. If we pay attention, with intention, to the world around us now, we can change our future to one of abundance, security and belonging for all.
Instagram: @eileenderosasart
Can you start by telling us more about the pieces you submitted to the “Material Lineage” exhibition and the process behind it?
Overpass is a silk print of three digital collages, part of the Scenes from a Walk series. These scenes are all part of a daily walking practice in which I observed and documented the natural and unnatural local area for a full year. I collaged many images of a day into one, blurring the reality of the scene and changing it to convey emotion and drama. Both the documentation and collaging are intuitive processes designed to draw out hidden expression.
The center panel is a winter scene on sheer silk. The panel behind is printed on a more opaque silk, visible through the first. The two side panels show the sky in July. The perspectives in the images line up to form a triptych, echoing painting conventions. The sheer panels move in the slightest breeze, shifting like a curtain in your home in the summertime, like memories changing each time you encounter them. Sticks salvaged from my walks suspend the panels from the ceiling, unmooring them from the ground.
You mention your interest in the liminal spaces between urban and natural. How do these spaces influence your work, and how do you bring out their significance in your art?
I walk daily in a semi urban neighborhood. While there are fields, trails, sky, and water, most of these natural elements sit hard by highways, arteries, houses, and businesses. For some time, houseless people made their homes in a small bit of swampy woods between a soccer field and the highway. The long standing neglect of these places–and people– and how they have thrived while being neglected, interests me. In my art I transform them from eyesores into sublime landscapes, full of the same drama as a mountain top view. I intentionally echo the compositions from painters of the Romantic period, like J.M.W. Turner and Caspar David Friedrich.
In the "Scenes from a Walk" series, you consistently traveled to peripheral spaces. What draws you to these overlooked and unpruned areas, and how do they contribute to the message or atmosphere of your work?
These types of spaces have always attracted me since I was a child. We lived on a dead end street near a busy road and a lake. Across from the lake and the road is a cemetery and a swamp. All my wanderings in “nature” contained trash, dead animals, traffic, poison ivy, weeds, and graffiti, as well as the herring run, birds, trees, and water. I still wander these places as an adult. The message of my work is that we, as people, are not separate from the place we inhabit, and that connection to our local place can change our world for the better.
Your work seems to carry a message about the potential for change through attention and intention. Could you elaborate on this message and how it's conveyed through your art?
By paying attention to the world around me, with intention, I connect with the earth itself. We, as people, are the planet. If we want to continue living in this world, we need to change our way of life. My art is the artifact of this connection, creating beauty where most people only see ugliness, if they see it at all.
Your work explores the female figure through an empathetic gaze. What message or emotions do you hope to convey to your viewers through this approach?
The figure in my work is implied, and can be any gender. The viewer takes my place, as an observer of an external and internal space.
Your work is focused on the mundane and the overlooked. What kind of response or connection do you hope to evoke in your viewers when they interact with your art?
I hope that the viewer feels an emotional charge or connection. If they realize that what appears grand is actually small, or that this beautiful landscape is actually a houseless encampment, for example, that is great, but not necessary.
How do you measure success as a visual artist?
Success as a visual artist–what a question! Is it having gallery representation? Is it showing your work? Is it selling your work? Is it someone connecting to your work and telling you? Or is it a thriving studio practice, where you are fully engaged and working on projects that are meaningful to you? I suspect it is the latter, although material success and recognition are nice and affirming.
What message would you like to share to emerging artists based on your experience?
Keep working!
