Spotlight Artist

Olivia Isabel Rosato

Midwest
Artist profile photo

Tornado 4

Abstract swirl of brown and orange hues blending from left to right.

oil on panel

Bridge 2

Abstract painting with large red archways and dark blue shadowed spaces.

oil on panel

Winding Road

Abstract painting with curving streaks of orange, red, and black on a lavender background.

oil on panel

Featured in New American Paintings1 / 3

Artist Statement

 In my work I employ pictorial space as a threshold to explore the emotional resonance of liminality, memory, grief, and the interior within constructed space. As a silent character, I dissolve into the transformative armature of painting and drawing, navigating the vulnerable questions of loss without the requirement of a clear answer.

My subjects are transitional spaces: a stairwell, a tunnel, the passageway under a bridge, the bend of the highway, a tornado in unlikely stasis. I offer these fleeting images without regard for their destination, evoking movement through the lens of a disorienting pause.

In reimagining an image, details serve as leverage to obscure the line between representation and abstraction in each scene. These fragmented moments behave like ominous portals. In my investigation of these elusive moments of forced stillness, I often question what needs to be intact in order for something to be recognizable. I draw attention to these delicate, ephemeral thresholds that elicit anticipation for the unknown, call for surrender to discomfort, and ask, what is lost when reimagined?

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