“The world Rose shows us is thick, dark, sculptural yet fluid, a kind of slowly moving lava of being that has clotted into natural forms, but than seems capable of being stirred into motion again, when it will gradually dissolve and with its viscous eddies and up thrusts compose another…”

WILLIAM BALTHAZAR ROSE was born in Cambridge, England in 1961. Educated in the States, with degrees in painting and architecture, he has devoted his adult life to studious artistic inquiry and expression; being strongly influenced by the classical tradition and in particular the painting of Piero della Francesca. This later interest has led him to live and work in the upper Tiber Valley, Italy. Rose has demonstrated a wide range of abilities throughout his career and has exhibited and lectured internationally. He paints from studios in England, France and Italy.

Rose has an underlying with the abstract issues of painting, which include structure and atmosphere. He is drawn to a meditative quality within his work that creates room for emotion. Believing that poetic form comes from reduction, his work is increasingly concerned with a felt response to life. This has led to the development of his own personalized language that is whimsical, mysterious, and allegorical. His figurative pieces possess a meditative subtlety and “it is from these scenes that one gets the full force of the ineffable mystery that this artist can evoke”.

Recent work aims to create a psychic tension achieved through colour, mood and tonality, which is evident in his landscapes, still and figurative pieces. Central to Rose’s paintings is the concept of visual unity. He endeavours to create unity in his work through aesthetic approach sensibility. This has led recently to the aesthetic extension of the entire piece. Again, this has roots in classicism, but we are seeing Rose develop a freedom of expression through the integration of his extensive classical awareness into a fresh contemporary maturity.