Cynthia Rosen, painter
How she orchestrates a symphony of color and why she often works on two canvases at once
During the ninth annual Cape Ann Plein Air event this past October, what one could call “Kodak photo spots” and many more places around Cape Ann were occupied by talented painters competing to make prize-winning and saleable art pieces. The event kicked off with a Saturday morning “quick draw”—previously reported here—during which the festival participants and many others had exactly two hours to paint a scene in proximity to Maritime Gloucester.
On the sunny October morning, there was an impressive display of talent including Cynthia Rosen from Dorset, VT. While many painters chose simpler subjects, Cynthia chose to paint a complex harbor scene—a bold move for this competitive and timed event. The result was a 16” x 20” scene of the waterfront featuring bold colors and subtler patina. Cynthia’s work included her signature facets of orange serving to unify the image.
Cynthia was an art major in high school, growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia. On the strength of her portfolio, she received a full scholarship to what was then called the Museum School in Boston. As Cynthia recalls, the Museum School art program was loosely structured and focused on open studios and experimenting. Cynthia described a drawing class with a figure model and seeing the instructor draw a triangle. “At first, I was horrified,” she recalls. “Still, I thought he must know something, otherwise he wouldn't be teaching at the school.” She quickly learned that the instructor was demonstrating that everything is a shape.
While in art school, Cynthia was invited to put up a show at the Boston Athenaeum, which led to her work being sold at a New York City gallery. Cynthia describes her art of that time as nonobjective pastel drawings.
She stopped going to classes when she was offered a full-time job working as a paratherapist at a halfway house. She saw it as a possible career and liked the adult sense of independence she felt. She would make art in the evenings. Soon after, she won a grant to set up art programs in halfway houses and jails. Subsequently, she spent a lot of time teaching art at the Salem Jail, a couple of halfway houses, and an alternative school.
When she finished school—that was the days when students would present their portfolios at the end of the semester to receive credits—she won a fellowship to spend a summer painting in Norway.
Dateline late 1970s, and Cynthia goes to New York City because that’s what you do if you are an artist. However, her NYC residency did not last long. “I couldn't stand not being in nature, so moved to Vermont, and painted landscapes,” she said.
Cynthia took a break from art to focus on working and raising six children. When her children were in school, she pursued a master’s degree in art education, started to teach in local schools, and volunteered to paintbackdrops for a local theatre. She was thrilled to create scenery with paint rollers. That led to painting a mural for a restaurant, and the realization she could make a living as an artist. She took up plein air painting about nine years ago.
How did you arrive at your current painting style?
I was living in Arizona, and I liked being outside. I didn't know what plein air was, but I decided to try painting outside. I knew I didn't like painting on a white background, so I stained three small boards, one yellow, one red, one blue, and decided the red background worked well. When I went out to paint, I realized I didn't know how to mix colors.
It had been 40 years since I did anything with color other than painting the mural. It was a lot of experimentation. I was using a limited palette and mixing colors.
To learn about color, I used the palette knife for mixing clean colors. I realized I could paint directly with the knife to maintain the integrity of the colors. Colors dull every time you mix them with another color, so by juxtaposing them instead of blending, they maintain greater purity. Applying color in small strokes and not blending is an impressionistic technique called using broken color.
Tell me how you use shapes.
I use shapes to act as directions, which is a technique used by graphic designers, abstract painters, interior decorators, architects, and others. A square shape on the canvas creates a resting place. A circular shape acts like a target, and a triangular shape is directional, directing the eye.
I will sometimes subtly incorporate shapes. The word manipulation always sounds horrible, but the minute we paint, we're manipulating the viewer to see what we want them to see. I use shapes or colors to move the viewer around.
In some of these details [below] you can see how I allow the prestain to show through, adding a bit of excitement—when it’s a complementary color—and interest to an otherwise subtle color modulation. In other images, you can see the directions of the shapes more clearly, which aid in creating movement in the image.
My teacher at the Museum School who taught me about shapes was also interested in motion. At the time, I was driving an hour to work every day, and I was thinking art each way as I would see the world going by. Movement became part of my vocabulary and I’m still interested in movement in color. I'm really just beginning my painting career.
Where do you want to go with your painting?
I was doing a plein air event in Virginia two years ago and I painted a cider press. It was my first time creating a geometric kind of painting with a palette knife, and it was one of my favorite paintings. That made me realize I wanted to move toward more geometry; I've been doing so many paintings with little bits of color all over the place without structure.
You did some geometric paintings when you came to Cape Ann.
Yes, it all started to come together. The painting I did in Rockport during the Plein Air event of the lobster traps is an example of what I want to move toward. I'm going to spend the winter doing some more structural paintings.
From your social media, it seems like you are always at plein air events. How many do you do in an average year?
I usually do four, but this year, I did five.
What's been the most memorable plein air event that you've done, either in terms of scenery, weather, or subject matter? You don't have to say Cape Ann just because that’s where I’m located.
Plein Air Easton is amazing and lucrative. Last year, the event sold more than $500,000 in art during the 10-day period. The stress of the event pays off financially. There are 55 painters selected to participate, and it is an incredible honor to be selected, and great to be among friends and meet new artists. Like Cape Ann Plein Air, part of the joy of going there is that the event hosts a number of gatherings, so artists are not isolated. For someone like me who lives far from others, that is important.
I was also honored to get into the Cape Ann plein air event. I was clueless about the towns in the area and the incredible range of visual treats. Painting in Cape Ann is unbelievable, even if I am still intimidated by painting boats. Also, I've been invited to Door County this year and I’ve never been to that one.
Did you have any favorite spots or discoveries while you were participating in the Cape Ann plein air event?
I could paint every day at the Maritime Gloucester where the quick draw was. I had been to Rockport and loved painting there. But Gloucester is unbelievable for all there is—painting at Bass Rocks was exhilarating! I didn't know that there was any rocky coast in Massachusetts.
Has anything unexpected or unusual happened while you were painting outside?
Well, we've all been through wind blowing the painting and the easel down. I created my own easel, which is pretty windproof.
I've left some places because I felt unsafe. One time I left an isolated side road in California because men parked nearby kept looking my way while fiddling in their car’s trunk. It is at times stressful painting alone in isolated areas.
When I was in Atlanta, I wanted to paint the cypress swamps. I was participating in the Olmsted Plein Air Invitational and went to a state park. A huge gator nestled in near where I was painting. That was a little nerve-wracking! But I was partway through the painting, and I really liked where I was painting and didn’t want to leave.
Sometimes you will work on two paintings of the same scene at once.
When I came back to painting after raising my children, I didn’t know how I wanted to paint, so I'd put up two 16” x 20” panels. I'd paint the same scene, one more representational, and one more abstract.
When I was at a plein air retreat, Eric Rhoads, publisher of Plein Air Magazine and Fine Art Connoisseur, asked me to explain why I do this. I started by saying, "When you start painting when you're over 60, you need to paint fast, so you do two at a time!" [she jokes]. But it was really because I didn't know if I wanted to paint more realistic or more abstract. Now I paint both, so I don’t have to choose. I usually don’t do it when I’m at a plein air event. But when I was painting at Bass Rocks in Gloucester, I was actually painting three panels. It was my last day at Bass Rocks, and I couldn't get enough of it.
Tell me about your approach to your still life paintings.
I approach everything the same way. I move all over the canvas. Someone asked me: what is my focal point for a painting? I don't have a focal point—I want a symphony! I want people to move all through the painting and not be stuck on a focal point.
When I'm painting outside where I live in Vermont, I’m surrounded by trees and leaves and changing light on hills. Everything moves around, and I might put little tiny flicks of color in a painting, whereas still life allows me to have specific object shapes.
Do you have a standard process for making a painting?
I start by staining the board with red-orange stain because so many colors play well with red. I don't use a lot of red paint on the surface.
Then I will quickly sketch it in with a brush. If I'm painting where there are a lot of darks, I'll take some purple dioxazine or phthalo blue, or mix them together and quickly brush in some dark lines or dark areas. Then I'll go into it with a palette knife. I work all around and gradually build up the painting.
Tell me about the spatula-like tool you are using to apply paint.
It’s called a spatcher. I can use it to put on paint and slide it down, so it lets me stain with an extra color. A brush will blend colors, and that's not where I like to go. I use the spatcher to apply intense, pure color.
Then I can go in with a palette knife where I specifically want thicker color, more opaqueness. For my landscapes, I still mostly use the palette knife. But for the geometric stuff, the spatcher is a great new tool for me.
You often paint complex subjects. How do you simplify the subject?
I don't because I'm not big on simplification. I want a symphony. I want highs and lows. I want loud. I want quiet. And I want a big story. So, simplification is not my thing.
I consider myself either a contemporary Impressionist or post-Impressionist because some of my work gets more abstract. I have some pure abstraction pieces in my house that have nothing to do with any object, and some big collage nonobjective pieces here because every now and then, I like to change it up and do that too.
I’ve talked to many painters who choose to challenge themselves, apply constraints, or create a problem to be solved. Do you do some of that?
Oh, yeah. I was talking with another painter who said that when they go to a place to paint, they paint what they know. And my response was, when I go to a place, I paint what I don't know.
At the Cape Ann Plein Air Quick Draw, I painted some boats, and I am totally not comfortable with boats. That scene was a huge challenge and a silly choice for the quick draw. I want to be able to paint whatever's in front of me and not be intimidated by it. And the only way to learn to do it is by doing it.
You said that your favorite painter is Mark Rothko. Tell me more.
It's the impact. When you stand in front of a Rothko, you can just dream away. There are no boundaries. Yes, his paintings are on this rectangular surface, but by creating this very soft rectangle within that surface, and by letting colors blend and move, he's almost avoided the fact that his painting is on a rectangular surface.
I don't like the fact that paintings are these finite objects on a wall, on a rectangular surface. Somebody asked me what I would do if I had a lot of money. And I said, "I wouldn't paint." I didn't say I wouldn't make art though. I'd be able to hire an engineer [to implement my ideas]; to do things with light because light can be subtle and move you around.
Your son Ian Marion is also an artist. Did you expose him to art throughout childhood?
My children all grew up drawing, and still can, each with their own stylistic predilection. When I was cooking in the kitchen, my kids would climb onto the counter stools to be near. So, of course I gave them paper and pencils for drawing.
Rather quickly, I discovered that children will make a line on a paper and want a new piece of paper. So I gave them pencils and told them to draw right on the countertop, which was a manila-colored Formica and easy to clean.
Ian went to RISD and then New York Academy of Art. After trying different career paths, he has recently returned to painting. He paints virtually photographically, although he is working on a new series combining abstraction with photorealism, which he will likely begin to show in another year or two. We call on each other for feedback from time to time and I have two other children with art backgrounds who also give me feedback.
Lightning round questions
Most memorable art viewing experience
The Tate Museum in the mid 1970s in London. I stopped in England before going to Norway for a traveling fellowship. There was Mark Rothko on the walls and Giacometti on the floor. It was the most amazing exhibit I've seen in my life.
Do you have a painting of yours that you won't sell?
I won't sell my old ones. I put some of them away under my bed because I don't want to sell them. I keep them because they were the first time I did something or they have something that I learned from. One of them is a snowscape. I painted for about a year and a half in 1977-78 and it’s the only painting I have left from that time. I had not yet discovered a love for color.
You held onto your first plein air painting.
I keep the first plein air painting I ever did because of the fun memory of that day and because it’s not good enough to sell. There was a chocolate festival in Arizona and I love chocolate. I read that painters could paint on site, so I bought a stool, a $10 set of acrylic paints, two inexpensive acrylic brushes, and a canvas board, and I brought a jug of water.
I sat in 90-degree heat on the stool with the board and paints on my lap, and the jug of water on the ground and tried to paint. I learned rather quickly that I would be limited to basically one color at a time because in the heat, the acrylics dry immediately.
I ended up drawing more than painting and I didn’t get any chocolate! But it did show me how wonderful it is to paint outdoors and thus began my painting plein air [she laughs].
If you could go back in history and observe any painter, who would you choose?
I would love to see how Nicolai Fechin applied paint. Like many painters I know, I look closely at paintings in museums to figure out how the painter did it. His painting surfaces are utterly intriguing.
Most memorable meal
Before having children, when I lived in Colorado, I went to a game restaurant and had elk.
You're hosting a dinner party for six people living or dead. Who is coming and what are you serving?
Mark Rothko, da Vinci, Michelangelo, my son, Ian Marion, who is a painter, Picasso, and Monet.
I would definitely serve Moroccan-influenced cuisine because it is informal, and some is virtually finger food. We would sit around a round table or on cushions on a round carpet on the floor. Unlike an American style dinner where you eat and run, this would be an evening of talking and feasting.
The food would be on a huge lazy Susan so people could just turn it to access whatever they wanted. We would start with eggplant mash (like a baba ganoush). Moroccan or not, I would make hummus and a yogurt sauce similar to raita, but with mint and Moroccan spices; I improvise a lot when I cook.
For dinner, I would make a chicken and almond bisteeya with a seasoned cooked egg [bisteeya is a layered phyllo dough pie that requires the cook to flip it upside down right before serving it. It’s bold to make for company, but fitting for Cynthia, given her bold choices.] I would also serve a beef tagine; salad greens with oranges, almonds, and orange water; fish tagine with onions, lemon, and olives; spicy lamb skewered with dates; couscous with vegetables and harissa sauce; Moroccan anise bread (similar to this) and wines and teas to drink.
I would serve many desserts: a Moroccan rice pudding, almond crescent cookies, and something akin to baklava and using Moroccan spices. There would also be fresh fruit to cleanse the palate, maybe oranges with pomegranates and rose water. And because it is me...I would have to add something made with chocolate or serve a homemade kind of hot spiced cocoa drink. We would close the night with a nice Port.
Palate & Palette menu
If Cynthia comes to dinner, which she is invited to do, this is the menu I would serve to celebrate her love of chocolate:
Kale, pecan, pomegranate, and feta salad
Mole poblano chicken enchiladas
Chocolate mousse
Where to find Cynthia Rosen (and you should!)
Gallery 46, 2525 Main St. Lake Placid, NY
Bryan Memorial Gallery, 64 S Main St., Stowe, VT
Helmholz Fine Art, 442 Depot St., Manchester Center, VT
Thank you so very much Amy. I am always amazed when people are interested
in my work as for me...it is just what I do...nothing of note. :0) I am honored by your
writings and intrigued by how you get so much diverse information in a single article.
Such a fascinating background and process. I am always amazed at what some artists can do with a palette knife. Plein Air events are stressful! Hats off to Cynthia!