Domestic Warfare: Thelma Rosner at the Woodstock Art Gallery – Woodstock Sentinel Review

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Visitors to the Woodstock Art Gallery would be forgiven for mistaking Thelma Rosner’s paintings for rugs or embroideries upon first viewing. Made up of thousands of brushstrokes carefully assembled in waves of moody colour, Cross Stitch #1 (2011–12) and Cross Stitch #8 (2017) take inspiration from Afghan war rugs and Palestinian cross-stitch. They draw on the ways women caught within deadly conflicts continue practising their art, keep their traditions alive and communicate their experiences. Upon close inspection, the mesmerizing field of Xs in Cross Stitch #1 transforms into a town cornered by jet planes and missiles. Cross Stitch #8, meanwhile, evokes blood splatters in a smoky haze.

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Rosner is a London, Ont.-based artist who has spent decades of her impressive career exploring women’s work, decorative arts and the cultural consequences of religious conflict. Decoration, pattern and textiles have long been associated with women (often with the negative connotation of being lesser artforms) and are used by Rosner to think through women’s place in art history, as well as the intersections of art and domestic labour.

An earlier example of Rosner’s use of textile imagery may be familiar to frequenters of Museum London — She is Lost Forever (1992) was featured in the 2018 show Embodiment. In this enormous painting, an abstract tempest of red, gold and blue brackets a historical portrait of a noblewoman, whose head and lower half are interrupted by an intricate carpet and a unicorn tapestry. Weaving, abstraction and portraiture are contrasted in one of Rosner’s signature segmented compositions. Another striking example is Still Life with Lace Tablecloth (1998–99) from the collection of McIntosh Gallery, where abstract bands resembling yellow clouds and dark mountaintops are paired with a pile of headless fish, hypodermic needles and a close-up of Battenburg lace.

“Perhaps we are returning to the view that ornament and decoration express a profound aspect of our lives: the need for order and ritual,” pondered Rosner in 1999, speaking to the rekindled interest in decorative arts thatwas taking place at the end of the millennium, and which continues into the present. “We are acknowledging our observation of patterns in the environment, our connection with the cycles of nature, and the significance of the repetitions and ceremonies of daily life” (“Thelma Rosner and James Patten in conversation,” Thelma Rosner — Still Life, 1999).

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Just like the textiles on which they’re based, Rosner’s paintings required a huge amount of focus and order to create. Cross Stitch #1 alone comprises 23,808 crosses, each only about one centimetre square in size. It is this dedication to pattern and repetition that has garnered it a place in Woodstock Art Gallery’s current exhibition, A Moment of Mindfulness, curated by head of collections Nell Wheal. Inspired by the meditation technique of mindfulness, this new exhibition deals with themes of reflection, heightened awareness and intentionality, but doesn’t limit its repertoire to artworks that are relaxing or easy to digest. It highlights how mindfulness can also be used as a tool for engaging difficult personal and political situations, exemplified by Rosner’s cross stitch paintings and their reflections on the creativity and resiliency of the women of Afghanistan, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Decorative arts have often been given short shrift in art history, but these inspirations don’t foreclose Rosner’s paintings from discussing highly charged subjects. Thankfully, neither do they limit their visual power.

You can view Thelma Rosner’s work in A Moment of Mindfulness, which runs at the Woodstock Art Gallery until Sept. 17.

Reilly Knowles is the curatorial and collections assistant at the Woodstock Art Gallery, which gratefully acknowledges support for this position from the Young Canada Works program.