ELIZABETH ROSE Biography
Born in India, Elizabeth Rose moved to England at the age of 6, where she attended school and lived until her marriage. The artist began to practice sculpture in 1962 while living in Australia. Prior to that, she was a practicing speech therapist and had not received formal training in art.
"I had a preference for abstract and naturally based forms and worked directly in wood, stone, slate, plaster, and fiberglass," she explains,"That all changed in January of 1986 when I emigrated to the United States and began to explore more fully the two-dimensional aspects of sheet metal cutouts... working and folding them into three-dimensional works." For ten years, she created whimsical figurative sculpture and sculptural furniture in powder-coated steel that earned her several awards.
Creatively, Rose reached an epiphany when she realized that she needed to enjoy the process of sculpting. As working with the noisy tools for cutting steel was becoming stressful, the artist turned to clay, her true medium. The tactile softness and elasticity of the clay fits with Rose's creative process and longtime yoga practice, both apparent in her amorphic, expressive heads and figures. She then has the works cast in small edition bronzes.
Rose has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Australia, England, Canada, and the United States. In 1982 she was the joint winner of an open exhibition organized by Bexley London Museums Department in association with the Royal Society of Sculptors in England. In 1995, she received the Visions of Excellence Award of the AUA of Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Her work is in private collections in Bahrain, Australia, England, Canada and throughout the United States.
ELIZABETH ROSE Statement
"The strength of form in my new clay and bronze series reflects the influence of those earlier simplified steel figures. I am coming to clay with the perspective of a sculptor, rather than that of a ceramicist."
