American Landscape: Garden of Flowers 1979

Curator: Ralph Rosenborg's “American Landscape: Garden of Flowers,” created in 1979 with oil paint, bursts onto the canvas in a way that’s both chaotic and, strangely, harmonious. What do you see when you look at it? Editor: An explosion! An explosion of feeling. My first thought: Fauvism gone wild. The colors practically vibrate; they're so intense. But there’s a kind of beautiful dissonance at play. The shapes are fighting but the whole thing...it just about works. It makes you consider how flowers can also be threatening or dangerous if you put them altogether, a strange mass in one space...it is beautiful and threatening! Curator: Rosenborg was deeply invested in Abstract Expressionism. You see it in the energetic brushwork, that fearless use of impasto... those thick slabs of paint seem almost sculpted. The "American Landscape" title... is interesting here. Rosenborg pushes back against any representational expectation of the word, "landscape". Editor: True. No gentle rolling hills here. The abstraction here moves away from pretty imagery; he captures something more profound and elemental about the landscape, almost psychological. That blue at the top–it's the suggestion of a sky. But a tormented sky? A nostalgic memory? Curator: Or perhaps a distillation of 'place' that’s more felt than seen, drawing from something from a more personal place within the artists rather than literal observation? Rosenborg's legacy is more about the process of feeling a place. Editor: Exactly. The riot of colours - the reds, yellows, greens and hints of oranges– almost convey a sense of life teeming. I love the fact he took inspiration from this Fauvist influence. It reminds us of humanity, its vitality. Curator: And how nature mirrors that vitality. As Rosenborg developed later on, the form takes precedence here, reflecting more internalised feelings, capturing ephemeral impressions with powerful intensity and force through gestural brushwork, offering his most abstracted, felt, truth. Editor: It has stayed with me; such an expressive dance of emotion, captured in paint. Curator: Yes, the painting remains, humming on long after the initial experience. A powerful statement of feeling.