My name is Robert H. Rose,
I am an artist, an abstractionist, a non-Representational Abstractionist. I received my master’s degree in Architecture from Pratt Institute. I practiced architecture for over 40 years and retired 6 years ago. Where once, I placed line and shape on the paper to describe a client’s needs to the contractor; I now place line and shape to describe my inner soul, all of my gathered experiences, memories, and subconscious collective. Throughout my work, I repeatedly create something resembling a network without ever allowing it to resolve into an actual map, circuit, road system, floor plan, or biological structure; and at times I will produce an art piece which comes quite close to being representational of the real world, although there is a consistent tension between system and organism. I juxtapose heavy black structural marks against much thinner linear information. I place translucent, atmospheric fields behind more assertive foreground structures. I favor rectilinear systems but soften them with rounded corners.

The dense/network paintings accumulate marks until the surface becomes something approaching an environment. They suggest cities, circuitry, transportation networks, architecture, neurological systems, perhaps scaffolding. The paintings look constructed, but they don't look mechanical. They look planned, yet they don't look predetermined. They resemble diagrams for something that doesn't actually exist. A line encounters another line. A structure enters another structure. Something passes behind something else. A route stops. Another continues. An area becomes enclosed. Something escapes. Something almost connects—but doesn't. My pieces repeatedly ask us to experience relationships among forms. I want the viewer to feel as though something important is occurring just beneath the visible surface. As they are standing above a city at night knowing millions of unseen lives are unfolding beneath the streets. My hope is that you look intently at my work, and open your mind to the conversation the art wants to have with you.