Katherine Steichen Rosing

"When I walk in a forest, whether urban or wild, my vision is excited by the rhythms and textures of trees and by the ripples and reflections in ponds. In a few moments my mind quiets and turns introspective. Both the visible and the invisible forces in nature inform and inspire my work."

Rosing’s twin obsessions are forests and their watersheds—inspiring paintings and drawings embedded with environmental and philosophical themes. Rosing finds solace and wisdom in the forests where trees co-exist and nurture each other for generations. Her works are simultaneously joyous celebrations of life, filled with color, texture, and contemplative meditations on cycles and forces within nature.

Surface and color are important in Rosing’s paintings where she meticulously applies many layers of paint thickened with painting mediums to develop relief surfaces that enhance the play of light and color like nature’s textures.

Her work ranges in size and format from intimate textured oval paintings of rippling water on birch panel, to large immersive forest paintings on unstretched linen and canvas, to delicate mixed-media drawings on elegant archival Tyvek.

Intricate leaf patterns honoring various tree species fill colorful mixed-media works employing the circle as symbol of the tree canopy and our earth. In Rosing's soaring vertical scroll drawings her delicate leaves embedded within tree trunks delineated with graphite contour lines are reminiscent of the DNA rising in a tree trunk.

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Selected Exhibitions & Awards
Beneath the Canopy, Gallery 1308, Union South , Madison, WI , 2019
Emeralds to Ashes, Truax Gallery, Madison College, Madison, WI , 2018
Threads of Truth, Zhao B Art Center, curated group exhibition, Chicago, IL, 2020
Individual Artist Fellowship, City of Madison Arts Commission, Madison, WI , 2018
Two-person exhibition with Kohji Ohsono, Gallery Toki, Tokyo, 2003
Individual Artists Project Grant, Dane Arts Commission, Madison, WI , 2018