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Life as paint

Rosebrooks creates her own scene

by Leon Nigrosh

ANN C. ROSEBROOKS: VIGNETTES & VARIATION at the Paradis Art Gallery, 274 Main Street, East Douglas, through July 27.

If you were unfamiliar with Ann C. Rosebrooks's work you might mistake it for children's refrigerator art or folk art. Simplistic imagery of people swimming, dancing, and singing painted in brilliant color. Her work exudes childlike joy, suggesting that it was created happily and quickly. But there's more to the 26 paintings on display at the Paradis Gallery. Rosebrooks has created complex scenes that exhibit the precise control of an artist well-schooled in line, color, and composition.

Rosebrooks is not a romantic self-taught folk artist. Instead, she survived the rigors of Rhode Island School of Design. Although many artists have the RISD imprimatur, she was able to maintain her highly personal and intuitive painting style which she has continued to use for more than 25 years.

Rosebrooks's work is directly related to people, places, and everyday occurrences from her life. By presenting these images in her simple and disarming manner, she draws her viewers into the scenes. For example, most of us have been in a mall, so when Rosebrooks presents us with Sarah Shops, we feel the clutter and hectic activity attendant with such places. Similar to the work of French painter Henri Matisse, this picture is a riot of brightly-hued clothing patterns merging with patterned floors; it is awash with clashing colors, figures, and fashions that float through a skewed perspective. There is an excess of detail throughout.

None of this is haphazard or incidental. Rosebrooks reworks canvases for as long as six months. Colors are purposefully placed next to each other for maximum effect. Her goal is not only to capture our attention, but to hold it.

Through bright color and a mix of humorous and contemplative scenes, Rosebrooks tells the tale of her life. We see her growth and maturity, we understand her vision as a wife and mother. In Money Trap, an example of her earlier work, we see a self-portrait of the artist working an office computer against ticking clocks while, overhead, there are thought balloons of dancing, painting, vacations, and sleep. In Walls of My Own Making, the artist stands in a transparent cube separated from others at a party. Her Generational Squeeze shows people being unwillingly clamped together by outsized pliers. In Rosebrooks's Then and Now series, we see one canvas with half showing the artist as a child with her parents. The other half shows her and her husband with children. All of these pictures portray experiences to which many of us can easily relate.

In her more recent works, such as Breakfast at Bob's, we can see that Rosebrooks has at last become a full participant in the activities. This is especially noticeable in her latest paintings of her women's group, in one instance shown dancing around a May pole and in Woman I Am, sitting about an evening campfire deep in the woods.

Rosebrooks's admiration of Matisse is particularly apparent in her paintings of interiors. In fact, her Red Table, Maine has an uncanny, yet unintended, relationship to his The Red Studio painted in 1911. Matisse's canvas is produced in shades of red and depicts his workspace with artist's materials strewn about. Rosebrooks's table is drawn with a nearly identical cant, but littered with vacationer's gear, binoculars, tissue, and portable radio. As with her "people pictures," Rosebrooks eschews the use of shadow or any artifice to simulate three dimensions. Rather than trying to give her work a photorealist effect, she prefers to use her talents to tell a story that's easily accessible. Her use of color invites children to gaze at her complex scenes while adults appreciate the meaning within those situations.

The Paradis Art Gallery is open Wednesday through Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. Call 475-1787.