Brooke Rogers

Artist Statement
The common yellow pencil serves in these works as a metaphor for creation. The poet writes with it, the artist sketches with it. Twisted and curling, looping and leaping, the work of creation is a muscular and robust activity. By extension, the pencil suggests the written word, specifically the central role played by ‘The Word’ in the Biblical creation narrative. The works shown at NIH are from a series of gouache paintings, (gouache is like watercolor, but more opaque), entitled Psalter – an old word for the Bible book of Psalms. As often as not, it is God’s role as creator that the psalmist magnifies through his hymns of praise. It is as hymns of a sort that these pencil paintings not only describe an energetic and encompassing space, but fill that space with the music of creative utterance.

Art Historian Ursula Ehrhardt, in an essay written to accompany the artist’s debut New York solo exhibition in 2005, wrote:
"A familiar, common object, the pencil is associated with both writing and drawing, as well as art-making in general. It is used to form both words and images which, in turn, can be related to language and art, understood as different signifying systems that structure how we view and represent reality.
Rogers’ Pencil paintings seamlessly blend abstraction and figurative imagery, word and image, painting and drawing, art and popular culture, and familiar objects with fantastic visual effects. They are at once amusing, absurd, and intensely serious, exploring the intelligibility of images and words as signifying systems."

Crystal and I saw Brooke's work at the Arlington Art Center when we were there purchasing a Tim Tate piece for NIH. So we were delighted when he sent us slides, requesting a show.