Life & Work with Dawn Marie Rozzo

Today we would like to introduce the artist Dawn Marie Rozzo.

Dawn Marie Rozzo has lived in Raleigh, NC for the past 20 years and has been a working artist and art educator for over 30 years. She crafts collages from upcycled books and creates evocative, expressive landscapes in watercolor, acrylic, and oil paints.

The experience of exploring and observing the natural world inspires and informs my art practice. My first visual inspiration is the rolling hills and woods of my childhood home in rural Pennsylvania. I have very early memories of exploring the hills, creeks, and farmland surrounding my home. I would spend hours outside. I observe that very few of us experience nature outside our immediate man-made world, whether it is our back yard or a visit to a local park.

I am attracted to fleeting moments in the natural world: a lightning flash, the pose of a bird, the morning’s changing light. These urge me to paint in a loose and interpretive manner using transparent washes of paint and gestural brushwork. My paintings are a love affair with layering transparent color over transparent color in order to relay my emotional response to the constantly changing sky and light. My collage work integrates natural or sustainable mediums, reflecting the man-made world as meditations of how we usually experience the natural world, firmly embedded in the man-made one.

I invite my viewers to further imagine and articulate their experience with the natural world.

“Nature is my inspiration, love is my motivation.” Dawn Marie Rozzo

We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
I don’t think you can grow without taking risks, and I have certainly taken some. I was married at 20 years old, and though it didn’t seem like a risk at the time since I was crazy in love, in retrospect, getting married so young was a huge risk. Still married and happy I made that choice.

Professionally, I usually jumped in headfirst and learned on the job. Most of the time that worked out well, but after working at my 3rd start-up business/school with its inevitable drama and lay-offs (art teachers get cut first) I decided to step back from academic teaching. I ended up working with disabled senior adults in nursing homes and assisted living establishments which started out as a gap measure and ended up being 15 years.

My most successful risk-taking both professionally and personally has been because I have trustworthy partners who stayed true, didn’t give up, and knew how to laugh.

Pricing:

• Small block painting $125 to large landscapes up to $1,800

Contact Info:

• Email: dmrozzo@dawnrozzo.com
• Website: dawnrozzo.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dawnmarie.rozzo/