Oil on canvas, 26" x 50"
The two Rocca pieces in the collection exemplify the Imagists' meticulous rendering of detail. Rocca's "Passed" was made after the death of her mother in 1988. With pointillist precision, Rocca created a calm and dreamlike work comprised of moon, cradle, and bird shapes and painted with calming, muted colors. Rocca was with her mother when she died and had a visceral sense that her mother's spirit had been released from her body.
"I'd been using bird images before in my work, but now they had a new significance," Rocca said. "And in sharing the painting with so many people here, it's become a way for her to live on."
-Jennifer Grant, Chicago Tribune
Rocca worked on her paintings and drawings at the same time, her ideas and icons evolving on each new page or canvas. After completing a series, she adopted a new set of images to explore and rework. In the late 1980s, Rocca created a series responding to her mother’s death. Astronavigate (1989) features two birds lying in crescent beds, apparently among the stars. The drawing connects to a 1988 painting, which Rocca explicitly called Passed an almost Pointillist rendering of a celestial scene, with another bird lying in another crescent bed at the center.-artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-decoding-denslu-packed-feminist-imagery-suellen-roccas-paintings
Suellen Rocca On the Term "Imagist"
Suellen Rocca Drawings-Mathew Marks Gallery
Suellen Rocca Bare Shouldered Beauty, Works From 1965-1969
Astronavigate courtesy of matthewmarks.com
