BIO
Sherah Rosen (b. 1984-Washington DC) grew up in Baltimore Maryland, and currently lives in Savannah, Georgia. The artist holds a B.F.A. in painting from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a M.F.A. in painting from Savannah College of Art & Design (2024). She has wanted to be a painter since she was a small child, and credits growing up amongst a family of artists and art collectors as early inspiration. Rosen was particularly taken with the synthetic cubism of Pablo Picasso as a kid. As a teenager she loved art critic Harold Rosenberg’s term “the action painters” the critic defined the canvas not as a surface for a picture, but as “an arena in which to act”. Sherah stands when she paints, and incorporates gestural movements with the paint brush. She views fine art as something lovingly made by hand, and as a vehicle to display raw emotion. Sherah lives in a coastal city in the southeastern part of the United States, where she and her husband enjoy boating along the barrier islands of Georgia. She also enjoys literature, classical piano, working out and playing billiards.

ARTIST STATEMENT

This current body of artwork present contemporary renditions, of the notion of the 18th-century sublime. I define the sublime as that which is otherworldly and transcends the everyday. My work showcases the historical movement’s dramatic style, that is linked to 18th-century German Idealism. The paintings meditate on the themes of sex, seduction and gender, including the famous aesthetic of the sublime, the beautiful and the grotesque.

This body of work features hyper-sexualized, scantily clothed or nude figures of varying gender identities. I suggest that seduction is similar to the postmodern sublime because it entices one to follow a path of beauty, but can also lead an individual astray, to something that is destructive and ineffective. The people in my paintings are looking for an escape from the mundane, they want to come to something extraordinary.

The artist technique is oftentimes rough with angst-driven, feral brushworks. The paintings are overwhelmingly painterly, tactile, and expressive.

My philosophy is that the sublime does not coincide well with Postmodernity and is ultimately unattainable, at best it is found in that of prescribed shallow spectacles. This actually leaves us feeling very lonely, and represents well the isolated nature of the 21st century human condition.

Disillusion solo show (Press Release)

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