Katherine Steichen Rosing: Atmospheric Intricacies

Exhibition Dates: June 4 – 29, 2024
Opening Reception: June 7, 5 – 8 pm
Artist Talk 7 pm

James May Gallery will mark its one-year anniversary in Milwaukee (and its tenth anniversary in Wisconsin) with an environmentally focused solo art exhibition, Atmospheric Intricacies, by artist Katherine Steichen Rosing. 

As we emerge from an uncharacteristically warm winter, Katherine Rosing’s paintings and installations ask us to look more closely at our changing Wisconsin landscape. Atmospheric Intricacies features new work fueled by Rosing’s fascination with atmospheric rivers and recent paintings that celebrate the persistence of life and interconnections within northern ecosystems.  Like the early abstract painter Arthur Dove, Rosing’s vibrant, expressively hued paintings evoke hidden mysteries in quiet ecosystems. Her exquisitely textured surfaces suggest root systems, wind, and notations about insect life, developed by applying many layers of color and enhanced by lines drawn in wet paint. 

Also known for her immersive installations, Rosing is creating a new installation for this exhibition that investigates connections between forests and the atmosphere. Rosing explains: “I am obsessed with atmospheric rivers, intensifying weather patterns that bring massive amounts of rain to narrow bands of land, leaving other areas arid and in drought. I’ve begun to think of them as a sort of malicious climate spirit or demon, and they are making their way into my work.”

About Katherine Steichen Rosing

Katherine Steichen Rosing’s work has been exhibited in over one hundred solo and group exhibitions in museums and galleries across the United States and abroad, including Tokyo, New York, and Chicago. Rosing’s work is included in public and private collections internationally, and she is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including the 2022 Forward Art Prize, and has furthered her environmental research through artist residencies, including the UW-Madison Department of Limnology’s Trout Lake Research Station and the St. Croix Watershed Research Station, sponsored by the Science Museum of Minnesota. Rosing earned an MFA in painting and drawing from Northern Illinois University, a BA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and taught at universities and colleges in Chicago and Madison. Rosing was born in Appleton, Wisconsin, and lives in Madison.