Alexandra Rozenman, painter, illustrator, and teacher
Her early art education with dissident artists, what happened when she moved in with Matisse, and why she loves to teach art
On first glance, Alexandra Rozenman’s paintings have a childlike quality, but on further examination they are sophisticated, political, and draw on more than 200 years of art history in her own unique ways.
Alexandra’s path to being a painter, collage artist, illustrator, gallery curator, and art school proprietor and teacher started when she was five years old and living in what was then the Soviet Union. That’s when her education in art history began. She was in a children’s art group at the Moscow Museum of Fine Arts and her father took her to museums and art galleries weekly.
She was raised by “free thinker and art lover” parents who encouraged her artistic interests and rebellious nature. When it became time to take an exam and submit her portfolio to apply to art school (at age 10!) she realized that formal art school would constrain her creative spirit. Instead, she became a student of dissident artist Grisha Bruskin, who was teaching art to earn a living and would go on to become a famous conceptualist artist. Of Bruskin, Alexandra says, “Watching him work on his Alefbet series in the 1980s inspired my imagination and gave me an amazing feeling about freedom of imagination.”
As a teenager, Alexandra became immersed in the 1980s underground art scene in Moscow. It was an exciting time for artists because Gorbachev had introduced an “openness” policy (i.e., glasnost) that gave them a bit more freedom. But that artistic life didn’t last for Alexandra. Her family decided to emigrate to the US, and she left her art community behind to start over. Her new life in the US included stints in New York City, Boston, Minneapolis, Virginia, and back to Boston where she now has a studio and runs Art School 99.
You recently had a show at the Fountain Gallery in Boston. The painting that stayed with me was the one of the music school.
It’s about fragility, being unstable, and war. That painting is the second piece on that theme. I sold the first one.
Do you have vivid dreams? I wonder if your dreams influence your paintings.
I almost never have any dreams, at least that I can remember. My paintings are made by my head and hand. Nobody gives me this information. I create it. If I had a dream, I don’t think I would be interested in painting it. In my head it would already exist, like it already happened.
Can you talk about what it was like as a teenager and artist in the 1980s in the Soviet Union?
When I was a teenager in the 1980s in the Soviet Union, everything felt full of hopes and dreams. Many underground movements developed at that time. Gorbachev wanted not to overturn the Soviet system but to loosen its grip in public life. He hoped glasnost would promote healthy criticism and perestroika would help the system work better. Instead, he opened Pandora’s box. The trickle of mild criticism he expected swelled to a torrent of pent-up frustration, especially from artists who had [previously] been forced underground [because of all the constraints on artists].
There were state-run galleries where the party controlled what could be exhibited and even controlled the supplies of materials to artists. Official art steered clear of subversive messages. This policy excluded everything abstract, surreal, or erotic. The communist party held that artists had to be engineers of the soul and serve the cause of building the community utopia. The art of socialist realism at its most didactic gave us nothing but happy workers, tireless farmers, and heroic portraits of Lenin. Until the late 1980s, underground art was only exhibited in the artists’ own crowded apartments.
After graduating from high school in 1988, I spent a lot of time showing my work on Arbat Street [described by some as the most charming street in Moscow and filled with street artists]. Then I found out my parents were planning to emigrate to the US. Instead of going to school I spent one free year in Moscow painting and drawing. Then I woke up in Pasadena, CA. This was a breaking moment. I was very unhappy because I didn’t want to leave [Moscow], but I couldn’t stay either because I couldn’t be disconnected with my family.
When you came to the US, did you continue making art?
Yes, and it kept me sane. I hadn’t learned English in Russia because I was stubborn. But I had to learn English and go step-by-step from Pasadena City College to figure out where to go next. I had read books about modern American art and concluded that if I wanted to be a real artist in America, I had to go to New York.
I found a program that was part of State University of New York called Studio Semester, located in New York City. The program connected me to galleries and I met artists, but I couldn’t figure out how to stay in New York. I had a smallish studio space on the Lower East Side with no heat and pieces of plywood on broken windows. But it didn’t bother me. I thought that’s how American dreams are built. I was wrong. Cold, starvation, solitude, and depression are not necessary conditions for pursuing your American artistic dream. It was more about surviving for quite a while. And I survived.
You created a series, Furniture in Unexpected Places. It’s striking, with images such as a bed in an ocean and the contents of a bedroom on train tracks. Can you tell me about the series? How did you get the ideas for it?
The ideas come out of my head. They are surreal ideas, but in today’s world, they are actually very realistic. If you look at documentary photographs from the Ukrainian war, you will see these images. The bed in the ocean is a classical surreal image. Many artists have used it.
Have you always painted in a representational style?
My work changed from narrative to abstract and then back to narrative. I tried to be an abstract painter in the 1990s. When I moved to New England, my work became more narrative, and then more and more narrative. I had two very good teachers at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston—Gerry Bergstein and Robert Ferrandini—who were both narrative painters. They helped me to find my spot in contemporary art. My work looked foreign for a while, but now more people are doing this.
The Furniture in Unexpected Places paintings are just one chapter of narratives of me cohabitating, moving in with, and waiting for famous artists. When I started work about moving into other artist’s paintings, that clarified a lot for me. The first piece where I moved into someone else’s painting inside my painting was Moving in with Matisse.
You started with Matisse. What artists did you add to your Moving In series?
After the Matisse painting, I created pieces involving works by Edward Hopper, Bruegel, and many more. My favorite piece from that series is Moving with Turner to Brooklyn. Then I started making paintings in a series called Blind Dates, where I depicted myself inside the painting waiting for an artist. Then I made some paintings in that series where I removed myself.
Why did you remove yourself?
I don’t think I’m necessary. The painting works anyway. [Blind Date with Edward Hopper, below, is one of the paintings without Alexandra in it.]
Did you put yourself in the paintings because of the artists’ influence on you?
No. I just wanted to tell people the whole story. There’s a series I call Dates and Meetings. It includes a painting where I’m meeting Frida Kahlo at the Mexican border. In it, I am a character from a Frida Kahlo painting and Frida is not Frida Kahlo, she is actually a character that she already painted. It became a funny, very political painting. It had nothing really to do with Frida Kahlo. We kept talking about the Mexican border during Trump. It’s a comment. I use a sense of humor in my work to build up a scenario. There’s another painting where I have a date with Edward Hopper at the Red Square.
In Blind Date with Edward Hopper, what’s the significance of the teapot and the egg in a pan?
That’s just my personal utensils. I always have them. [These seem to make many appearances in her paintings.]
Your paintings show your sense of humor. It seems that sometimes you are using humor to get the viewer’s attention to show them something sad.
They are usually sad [laughs]. It’s because that’s how I am. I don’t have any other way [laughs]. I am letting it go unconsciously. If you see the scene of what is happening in the picture, its usually pretty sad. I just am that way. My life has been pretty difficult and it’s only art that keeps me going.
You run Art School 99, an art school with many types of classes. Tell me about that.
I established Art School 99 when I moved to Boston in 2009. I am a teaching artist, and my desire to start my own art school was rooted in my family history and my love of teaching. Art is a tool for personal growth. We are born creative, but if we neglect to develop and strengthen these skills, our creativity is inhibited. By encouraging a child’s creativity, you set the stage for endless opportunities for that child’s imagination. I always remind myself when I’m teaching adults that the mediocre teacher tells, the good one explains, and the brilliant one inspires!
Tell me about your collage project that you started during the pandemic.
I went to live with my parents in Virginia and didn’t have a dedicated studio. Here’s what I wrote on my website for my collage projects: I started working on smaller pieces of paper, adding ink and watercolor to my older drawings that I found around the house. Everything felt disconnected. My thoughts began separating older images into shapes first, inside the watercolors, and combining watercolors to drawings, and watercolors to watercolors, and drawings to drawings. I was choosing sections and making shapes out of old ideas—selecting.
Dissecting and connecting pieces of my older work gave me a big room for new ideas. I was inside the process—when paintings, drawings, or anything else you are creating at the moment make themselves for you because you are giving them everything they need in exactly the right way at exactly the right time. I also invited other artists to give me their unneeded work on paper to use in the project.
How do you decide whether you are going to make a painting or a collage?
They are extremely different things, so there is nothing to decide. [I think the answer is based on which physical space she’s in.] Right now I’m lucky because I have two spaces where I can work. I paint in one space and I do collage in my office. I don’t keep them in the same studio, and that’s important for me because I don’t want them in the same space. If I mix them together they will be mixed in my head and I don’t like that.
You’ve said that you repeat certain themes. Why is that?
Because they are very good, they work, and people want to buy them. When I get new orders based on a certain piece, I change what I paint the second or third time so it is not the same. For example, I had a series called Rethinking. In the series, a painting is divided into two sections. One section has a recognizable landscape and the other section has a wall on which a famous painting is hanging. There was a painting called Rethinking Pollock in New York, and Rethinking Malevich in Moscow. When I got commissions to paint them again, I changed the landscape and the painting and the wall. They have a story they tell every time I paint them.
What is the best advice you received as an artist?
Be persistent and believe in yourself. Work hard and don’t expect any miracles. That’s when they happen, when you don’t expect them.
Has there been a miracle for you?
Yes. In 1998, when I graduated from the museum school, I applied to many galleries and I had a small show at the New England School of Art and Design that was curated by Charles Giuliano. The show was reviewed by Art New England, and then Meredyth Moses came to see it. She accepted me to her gallery, the Clark Gallery, where I had a lot of success.
Who are the artists and creative people you admire?
First, my father [he is a mathematician and computer scientist and he and Alexandra made drawings together when she was a child]. My parents were very young when I was born, but they really believed in me because they were naïve [she says with self-deprication]. They helped me believe in myself. I appreciate Gerry Bergstein who was my graduate school teacher. I love his work and his approach to art. Today we are close friends and we can talk about art, which is very special.
Other artists I admire include Lee Krasner, Amy Sillman, Katherine Bradford, and Julian Rosefeldt.
Have you ever painted a subject matter you didn’t like at first and then you came around to it later?
I had a commission for bookstore many years ago. It might have been my first commission and it was uncomfortable and difficult. I had to learn a lot of things immediately to do it. I was unsatisfied with it, but the people who asked for it liked it so much that I lost the reason to dislike it. I do push myself a lot. I teach my students to do that too.
It’s important to be uncomfortable some of the time when you are making art. If everything is so smooth and so easy, it’s not right. When it comes to art, I’m comfortable being uncomfortable.
Is discomfort part of your painting experience or are you making choices that involve discomfort?
It’s part of how I work. If everything is too clear, I will change it or give myself another assignment just to make things more interesting. Or I will work with another artist or another creative person such as a musician or a writer to do something else. This is important, otherwise how will we grow?
Can you describe an example of when you’ve worked with another artist?
I have a wonderful friend, Frankie Gardiner, who I met in graduate school. Now she lives in Vermont. We did a project where we would send each other unfinished watercolors. [I love this idea, which is similar to how Nella and Steve Lush collaborate.] We have a beautiful series of work on paper. These pieces influenced me to start collage when I did. I always look for people who want to do a collaboration like that and I tell people we should do this as much as possible.
What are some of the collaborations you’ve done with writers?
I’ve worked with writers on book projects. I collaborated with Mikhail Epstein on a book called Sticky Leafs. I painted a Cyrillic alphabet and each letter tells a story. I created the drawings for a book called Two Hands Clapping, and Grace Andreacchi wrote poems in response to the drawings. Also, my friend Yanislov Wolfson, who is a poet, gave me two books he wrote and I made illustrations for him.
Are you working on any new projects?
I am digesting what I just did and need a break in the studio. However, I will probably just start a new canvas at some unexpected moment and something will happen. Also, I’m gallery director at Brickbottom Gallery, and I’m curating a show called Friends that will open in December.
Do you like to cook?
I love to cook! I like to make soups and stews. I’m not sure why, but I love cooking meatballs.
Lightning-round questions: People often bond over food and art, and here are quick questions about both.
Favorite breakfast. My favorite breakfast is an omelet with mushrooms and onions. I also love smoked fish with a bagel.
If tomorrow was your birthday and I was going to bake you a cake, what kind should it be? A French cake with white cream.
Most memorable meal. Last week my friend Eric and I discovered a new for us restaurant, Moeca. The parsnip soup [which according to the menu contains harissa, hazelnuts, and grapes] was amazing!
You are hosting a dinner party and get to invite six people who are living or dead. Who would you invite and what would you serve?
I want to have a dinner party with myself in my 20s, 30s, and 40s, along with my sister, mother, and father.
What is your favorite piece of art you own? I have a tiny painting of an eye made by Gerry Bergstein.
Most captivating museum visit. My trip to Italy in 2016 by myself was life changing because I saw so much wonderful art and so much of Italy. I was in Rome for a week.
Palate & Palette menu for Alexandra
If Alexandra comes to dinner, which she is invited to do, here’s what I would serve as comfort food that would be good fuel for a long painting or collage session:
Apple and Cheddar Crisp Salad
Vegetable Pot Pie
Lemon Olive Oil Cake
Where to find Alexandra Rozenman (and you should!)
Brickbottom Gallery: Friends: A Conversation: December 15, 2022 - January 12, 2023
1 Fitchburg St., Somerville, MA
Wedeman Gallery, Lasell University, Dreamscapes: November 9 - December 10, 2022
47 Myrtle Ave, Newton, MA
What a fascinating journey; artistically, politically and geographically. I feel so sheltered by comparison. Another great interview Amy!