“For as long as I can remember, I have been totally in love with the wilderness. The untameable, irrepressible power of the elements has had me spellbound since childhood, and our relationship with the natural world fascinates me. Civilisations rise and fall, but nature prevails - old walls and way-markers become engulfed by plant life; forests once decimated by fire rise up from the ashes; cliff-top castles tumble into violent seas; even entire cities can be swallowed up by windswept sands and rising trees. Creation and destruction are two sides of the same coin in the wild. I’m often struck by the symbiosis of growth and decay - how something beautiful can form in the most unlikely ways: a flash of lichen on a rock; the scattering of ashes after a fire; even the spread of damp across a wall. These naturally occurring marks and imprints form the basis of my painting. They develop in the same unpredictable way - with that same feral perspective. As a painter I’m interested in the alchemy and symbolism of material, and engaging with, rather than fighting against, the transformative effects of the elements. Much of my work is concerned with exploring this in themes of wildness, rewilding, and ecological succession, often within the wider context of living on the brink of the world’s sixth mass extinction event. We must learn to work with nature, not against it.”
Rosannagh graduated from Oxford Brookes in 2016 with First Class Honours in Fine Art and was awarded the Fine Art Dissertation Prize for the best critical submission in her year.
Rosannagh’s work explores the alchemy of painting by abstracting colour and form through exposure to elemental forces. Symbolic and unconventional materials are mixed in experimental ways that work with, rather than against, the transformative effects of fire, rain, ice, time or gravity to reflect the untameable nature of the elements, and the duality of creation and destruction. Themes explored include wildness, rewilding, ecological succession and alchemical symbolism. Rosannagh has exhibited both in the UK and Europe, and has work in several private collections.
