Artist's Statement
“Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap rythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that melts the stars.” Gustave Flaubert, Madam Bovary
To touch the soul is my desire as an artist. This striving not only gives meaning to my life but gives expression to my love of beauty. Through the embrace of visual art and music, I seek to touch others that they may sing and not die with their music in them.
Artist Bio
“One thing that consoles me, always, in painting is that I believe all painting is worthwhile so long as one honestly expresses ones own ideas.” Venessa Bell, English artist and designer.
The arts have always been a part of Roxanne Rodwell’s life beginning with her early immersion into music learned, literally, on her mother's knee.
Although Roxanne read music before she read words, she didn’t attempt to apply it as a serious pursuit until her children were in college. Ultimately, she graduated from the College of the Ozarks with a degree in piano performance and taught piano privately until coming to the Southwest.
The importance of her artistic talent was recognized and at age eleven she was privileged to attend membership classes at Chicago Art Institute where she drew from live models along with a hall full of young students. In a recent conversation with Judy Chicago on the occasion of her retrospective exhibition at New Mexico State University, they compared notes of their mutual experience in that class.
Leaving her birth place, Branson, Missouri, the art spirit remained strong through frequent changes in climate, culture and language. Always, Roxanne found teachers along the way among whom there were three or four who kept her inspired and working.
In the past fifteen years she has participated in special studies with Alex Powers, William Herring, Gil Dellinger, Charles Reid, Joseph Lorusso, Lynda Kyser Smith, Donna Howell-Sickles, Scott Burdick and Lorenzo Chavez. The special strengths and talents of each have kept Roxanne striving toward her goal of mastery as an artist.
Recently she was honored with a solo exhibit at the Las Cruces Museum of Fine Arts and Culture showing a volume of work reflecting the essence of woman through legend and myth as lived unconsciously throughout history.
Roxanne is also regularly invited to exhibit with the Border Artists, a group whose limited membership includes artists from southern New Mexico and El Paso, Texas.
She remains committed to the color and drama of the landscape but sees the figure as the most enchanting and challenging subject and agrees with Rodin that there is nothing in nature with more character than the human body. The Southwest’s dramatic grandeur, a daily joyful encounter, could not be ignored and its beauty now shares Roxanne’s easel with lovely women.
Be sure to visit Roxanne's website: www.roxierodwell.com.