Rose Stapleton

Human presence is always suggested in Rose’s paintings. She rarely depicts figures but their auras insist themselves. Her work might almost convince one of the possibility of psychometry, the faculty of divining, by touching a physical object, the character of persons who have previously touched it. In Rose’s interiors someone has just - one can smell them - left the room and the imagination is piqued. She furnishes us with a freeze-frame and we are left to run on the film in our imaginations - pure poetry! These frozen moments in time with their ethereal, absent occupants are evocative starting-points which run into an intricate web of images. By some strange magic these evocations of stillness unfold into drama.

Currently her work encompasses those quotidian spaces occupied by all of us, domestic and professional, private and public. The larder, the drawing-room, the antique shop, the circus ring all respond to her instinctual interpretation. This theme of a protective space seems to be a natural progression from her early series of birds’ nests with their eggs which first brought Rose to the attention of curators and patrons.

Rose graduated from Ireland’s National College of Art and Design in 1999 with an Honours Degree in Fine Art Printmaking and distinction for her thesis. She was elected a member of the Water Colour Society of Ireland in 2004. She has exhibited widely since 1987 including at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, Jorgensen Fine Art, Dublin, Contemporary Irish Prints, New York, the Banquet Exhibition at the Royal Hibernian Academy and Petley Fine Art in London.