Rita Rogers: Selected Paintings

August 29 - January 3, 2010

Rita Rogers #501, Oil on canvas

The Newport Art Museum takes a look back at three decades of work by Rita Rogers this fall - paintings the Newport artist has created since a devastating house fire destroyed much of her earlier work in 1977. "Rita Rogers: Selected Paintings" runs through January 3, 2010.

Rogers has moved from painting to printmaking and back again during her career. As a young artist during the 1960s, she felt her abstract paintings were "following the same trajectory" as many other artists working in New York City at the time. Believing that her work was not distinctive enough, she gave up painting. Rogers says, "I wanted to be more of an individual. I started making prints and became obsessed." Turning against the tide of the time, Rogers' large intaglio prints were realistic rather than abstract. She lost many of these works during the 1977 fire.

The earliest works in the Newport Art Museum retrospective date back to the early 1980s when Rogers started painting again, shifting from realism back into the abstract style. It was a good move. "The world opened up for me," she remembers. Her work began attracting critical attention, she received numerous grants and awards throughout the 80s and 90s and her paintings were featured frequently in group and solo shows in New England and New York.

Reflecting on the evolution of her work, Rogers says, "When I was younger, I thought I was always improving, but now I don't have any sense of progression. I spiral - going back and picking things up and bringing them forward. I'm trying to be more accurate."

Rogers says she has tried to make her paintings "as painterly as possible," meaning that they are more about formal concerns such as order, color and the paint itself than they are about subject matter. Still, she admits that these vibrant works are often "an embodiment of sensation," and as she looks back on the paintings as a group, she realizes "how personal they are."

About Rita Rogers: Rita Rogers grew up in New York City and has lived in the historic section of Newport, Rhode Island known as "The Point" for over 25 years. She studied art at the Art Students League in NYC and the Yale University Norfolk School of Art, amongst others. Rogers also studied Contemporary Literature at Columbia University and holds a Bachelor of Arts from Bard College. She has been the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, Ossabaw Foundation, Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation and others. Rogers' prints and paintings have been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Newport Art Museum, Brown University - Sarah Doyle Gallery, Stonehill College, Wheeler Gallery and Gallery One in Providence, and many other institutions and galleries in New England. Rogers also works as a restorer of fine art.

Read more about Rita Rogers in the Newport Mercury.