Jennifer Rosengarten: Gardens and Ponds

Water lilies in varying shades of red float across a blue- and green-hued pool dappled in shimmering sunlight. “Cobalt Pond” by Yellow Springs artist Jennifer Rosengarten is one of a dozen oil paintings featured in “Jennifer Rosengarten: Gardens and Ponds,” an exhibition of her work beginning this month at the Springfield Museum of Art.

“Jennifer really has an incredible talent when it comes to using color and scale to convey realism in landscapes,” says Erin Shapiro, assistant curator at the Springfield Museum of Art. “These beautiful scenes capture times of day and year we can all relate to. Because the canvases are life-sized, they present an opportunity for us to commune with nature on an intensely emotional level.”

The color palette for much of Rosengarten’s work is based on a childhood spent picking daffodils, lady slippers and bluebells on her grandfather’s farm in Peebles beside the creek that flowed nearby.

“Water and plants are vital life forces to me,” she says. “They represent change and flexibility inherent in all our lives. I strive to infuse all of my work with energy and motion.”

The idea for “Dinah’s Dahlias Red” was sparked by the profusion of blooms in her neighbor’s backyard. To make them her own, Rosengarten added vivid splashes of orange and red to the canvas, creating eye-popping bursts of color that appear three-dimensional.

“My intention is not to always be true to nature, but instead to make the subject evolve into a brilliant color idea,” she says.

 “Bass Pond Dusk” is the artist’s tranquil homage to a favorite vacation spot in Michigan.

“I hope my paintings are windows worth looking through,” Rosengarten says. 

The exhibition runs April 22 thorugh Jan. 7, 2018. For more information, visit springfieldart.net.