JULIA A. ROGGE

STATEMENT

Julia A. Rogge was a facile kindergarten painter and an award-winning student at the Milwaukee Art Institute during her grammar school years. A Marquette University grad with an English major, while working in publishing she continued sketching betimes on Saturdays and vacations throughout the years.

As time ticked along, her desire to paint grew ever stronger. With determination to pursue art, she resigned from her business career and honed her fine art skills at the Art Students League and illustration at Parsons School of Design. Despite family demands on her time and spirit, including advocacy for her autistic son, she is now able to schedule painting and drawing periods weekly. She has the enormous motivation that creating art requires, and the hours she spends on artwork are her most vital, cutting-loose, alive ones. She is addicted.

She quickly succeeded in showing and selling her art. She has exhibited her work in galleries in Pennsylvania's Poconos and had solo and group shows in many New York City venues, including The National Art Club and Salmagundi Club. She sells her work throughout the United States. She has written children's books, which she is illustrating.

Rogge's media are oil on canvas and ink on paper. Her work is representational, often painted plein air, and renowned for its luminous quality. Among her favorite places to paint are Pennsylvania's woodlands where she spends occasional weekends and New York City, especially Central Park. Her depictions of New York City's imposing park show people engaged in recreational activities and often include familiar landmarks. She views Central Park as a vast playground where people coexist with nature, and her exquisitely painted scenes express her depth of knowledge about and love for the Park.

Her subjects are diverse. They startle her with moments of epiphany, and she tries to observe them with intensity and make the most of them. She avoids "artspeak," much of which she believes is flummery. Regarding sensible commentary, you can stifle the life out of anything with too much talk about it.

Rogge is on the Executive Board of the Manhattan-NYC branch of The National League of American Pen Women, an organization whose outreach projects promote interest in the arts among school children. She is a member of the New York Society of Women Artists, Long Island City Artists, and the Society of Illustrators. She is currently represented by Art of the Frame gallery in Manhattan and is participating in a group show at the Belskie Museum in New Jersey in November 2019.