"Just When You Thought You Were Home"
Leah Rosenberg, "Just When You Thought You Were Home," 2005, mixed media on panel, 6' x 6'.
LEAH ROSENBERG, Sweet Raw (a two-person show with Siobhan Humston)
Jacana Gallery, Vancouver
June 1-25, 2006
By Beverly Cramp
Emerging artist Leah Rosenberg’s art is fantasy with a twist. Her paintings and mixed media works hark back to childhood days. “I work with materials that I was enthralled with growing up, like pompoms, glitter, yarn and felt. I like taking childlike creative impulses and translating them into art.” But if her fantasy-driven art enters the realms of reminiscence and nostalgia, Rosenberg says she has a serious side too. “I understand that happiness is more complicated than prettiness.” Rosenberg grew up on the prairies and moved to Vancouver where she graduated from the Emily Carr Institute in 2003. She will be going to San Francisco this fall to work on a Master of Fine Art at the California College of Art. Her work has appeared in more than 20 solo and group shows in Vancouver and includes what she calls “intervention-based works,” unsolicited work Rosenberg produces in public spaces such as 2004’s Random Acts of Fluff andMidnight Glitter Dumps in 2003. “I like infusing my work with a sense of colour and playfulness while at the same time telling a story that resonates.”
Represented by: Jacana Gallery, Vancouver; Bjornson Kajiwara Gallery, Vancouver.