joseph scissorhands: Anne Rothenstein

Saturday 5 November 2022

Anne Rothenstein

Moonlight - 2021 (detail)

"My reasons, or intentions, when making a particular painting are quite mysterious to me. The spark is always lit from an existing image, a photograph or another painting, and I often don't discover why that image leapt out at me or what it is I'm exploring until the work is finished. Sometimes I never find out. It is almost entirely intuitive. Finding a rhythm, searching for balance, alert to missteps, to what is happening, to changes of direction." - Anne Rothenstein.

Happened across these atmospheric paintings on one of my 'gallery days'. They are the first exhibition of artist Anne Rothenstein with Stephen Friedman Gallery, and I really enjoyed them as they initially appeared to be 'quiet', contemplative paintings in the Northern European tradition reminiscent of artists such as Vermeer, Harald Sohlberg (here), and Vilhelm Hammershøi (here), and (here), but then appeared to also have much in common with the ouevre of Edvard Munch. There were landscapes inhabited by clusters of anonymous close-knit figures. Moody bedroom interiors with solitary nude figures, isolated within their own thoughts which spoke of a sense of disapointment and alienation, loss, and perhaps quiet despair. These paintings are all executed in close, tonal, harmonious colour palettes. Cool blues and greys for interiors, and oppositional reds and greens dominate to enliven landscapes in thin washes of paint which enhance the natural texture and grain of the partially exposed wooden ground upon which they are painted. Rothenstein also uses small areas of pattern on fabrics to add furthervisual interest. Although the paintings appear 'quiet' there is an underlying tension which hints at something much darker like domestic abuse in two portraits in which the female subjects display black eyes.