Jane Rosen

Jane Rosen's paintings, sculptures and reliefs are mostly of animals she sees daily around her home in Northern California. She does not think of them, however, as being representational, though they are portraits of being, that is, of a fuller state of existence than the one lived by humankind.

Poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote about this. Animals are not self-conscious. Hence, little intervenes between them and the world. When they watch a thing, they are fully present in the watching. We, on the other hand, are distracted by our own hyperconsciousness. The goal of a number of spiritual disciplines is, in a sense, to get back to the animals' "purer" state.

- Excerpt from Alan Artner’s Jane Rosen at Gwenda Jay/Addington Gallery, Chicago Tribune, Friday, May 18, 2007