Warren Rosser
Although he was trained as a painter and has taught painting since 1972, Warren Rosser spent much of the 1980s and 1990s creating abstract mixed-media wall reliefs and freestanding sculptures. In 1998 he returned to painting and has since produced hundreds of nonobjective canvases that have been featured in numerous solo exhibitions to consistent critical acclaim. To create this ongoing series of acrylic paintings, Rosser has worked on the floor, using squeegees and trowels to move paint across the canvas surface and defining forms through the use of masking tape and stencils. The principal form has been a stenciled ellipse, which Rosser has modified frequently as his work has evolved. Early paintings in the series feature an ellipse-and-track motif that generates numerous references, both natural and cultural, from stemmed flowers to cartoon-style legs and feet, from mallets to barstools to pendulums. Later works include an ellipse with short stems on either of its long sides, which Rosser likens to a head with projecting ears. Rosser has also worked with large circles around which the ellipses rotate, and with horizontal and diagonal divisions of the colors that constitute the ellipses’ environments.
In making these works, Rosser has focused primarily on the organization of the elliptical forms: “how do they meet, overlap, conjoin, slip by each other, collide, and pull apart?” Rosser thinks of the paintings in terms of the transmission of information, and likens their forms to “hand signals (sign language), musical notations, or, perhaps, the layered readings of hieroglyphics,” which can be variously interpreted—just as any language can be. Interested in the relation of his paintings to time-based media such as film and music, Rosser has even arranged for the musical interpretation of his art, inviting Dwight Frizzell and Thomas Aber of newEAR to perform in direct response to his paintings in galleries in Kansas City; St. Louis; and Brookings, South Dakota.
From 1998 to early 2004 Rosser worked with high-keyed colors, creating bold and exuberant paintings. In mid-2004 he reduced his palette to a subtle range of grays, using bright colors only to outline the occasional ellipse on the surface of the painting. Instead of declaring themselves loudly and emphasizing rapid transmission, as did the earlier paintings, Rosser’s recent pictures speak softly and invite us to slow down—the better to savor their subtle, embedded complexities.
—David Cateforis
