Eastern Shore Art Center: “Figuring It Out” by Rosanne McKenney
Date/Time
Date(s) - January 5, 2024 - February 24, 2024
12:00 am
Location
Eastern Shore Art Center
Categories
“Figuring It Out“
Rosanne McKenney
On Display: January 5 – February 24, 2024
Representational painter Rosanne Lillard Mckenney’s aim is to capture a simple moment of everyday life. She balances between revealing too much detail, and leaving parts unsaid. Inspired by Italian Renaissance painters and 19th century French, American and more recently Russian painters, she incorporates elements and techniques that made these artists distinctive. Working primarily in oil she tells a story. Mckenney occasionally incorporates abstract elements and symbolism into her pieces. She chooses the figure as her principal subject, because human gestures and expressions can say so much. The stories explore the essence of human experiences, often unresolved emotions, common through many cultures.
Raised by American parents in Italy, Rosanne learned to appreciate classical art without noticing. At 18 years when she moved from her childhood home, the ancient city of Naples, she realized how important art had been for her wellbeing. In university, Mckenney did not formally study art but from the first realization of the void left by leaving Italy, a land steeped in artistic beauty, she began a lifetime pursuit of painting, studying what made these classical pieces appealing over generations. Rosanne with her husband Jeff, moved to the Gulf Coast of Mississippi in 1990 where they started their family and the Christian organization that would support a Hospital, Children’s Center and School in Honduras. Over the past 23 years, they have lived and worked in Honduras, offering medical support at a mission hospital and school on the edge of the jungle. Living among the poor in an art-poor environment, intensified the need to pursue art. Rosanne paints in her studio in Honduras each day, before and after their busy surgery schedule, and teaches art History to Honduran students in person and on zoom when she is in the U.S.
Currently McKenney with her husband Jeff Mckenney a surgeon, share their time between Honduras and the Mississippi Gulf Coast with The Cornerstone Foundation, (Biloxi, MS). She paints every opportunity she has.