Rose Abrahamson and Cindy Kane: Close Friends

Rose Abrahamson:

Cindy and I became friends about ten years ago—we are kindred souls.

We’re self-taught artists.

Though our work is very different, we critique each other’s paintings. Her art is expansive—she suggests additions to my work and I suggest subtractions
to hers.  I am an intuitive painter and rarely have an idea in mind; I go where fancy takes me.

When I go to her studio and look at her large paintings, it’s like entering another world. I am drawn into it.

We are both skinny and inclined to be hypochondriacs, and we laugh a lot.

The years have added complexity and depth to my work. However, I think there is a part of all of us—spontaneity, humor, creativity—that never grows old.

Cindy Kane

The act of painting is sometimes a challenging relationship, full of obstacles, and sometimes it is very fluid, like a love story.
Some paintings are nearly perfect, but within them you can have, as Rose says, “a show off area”, and despite your attachment to that region of the work you just have to bury it for the sake of the composition as a whole.
Rose always tells me that less is more. This is hard for me, because I like to see a lot of information in a painting. But, she is always right. Sometimes the hardest part of the painting process is letting go of what you are most attached to. I think Rose said that.
Rose has a wonderfully calligraphic sense of line quality, and elegance in the way she draws. I tend to be more heavy handed, and see the over all picture. It helps me to study the delicacy of her lines, which are so ethereal. She also has a great understanding of the color blue, which is a mystery to me since I’m more comfortable with reds and warm colors.
I work within several visual formats and thematic concerns, but I always hope to find a subject that can sustain my focus for a long time. I spent several years just painting the toys and relics from my daughters’ childhood.
My artistic temperament is rather melancholic, so it is gratifying to find a subject that takes me out of that narrative, and lightens my inner palette.
Sometimes I am more engaged in a political or environmental story, and those attitudes and interests are reflected in my map and fire paintings, which deal with boundaries and anxiety. Every painting leads to the next one, so there is a kind of continuity, which sometimes (ironically) leads me back to the iconography of my beginnings.

Inline Images:   
(Top) Thomas Hart Benton, People of Chilmark; Traeger DiPietro, Something Important; Leslie Baker, Pink Barn; Elizabeth Cecil, Glow; Fan Ogilvie, photo of painting for her book of poetry, You.
(Bottom) Nora Laudani, video still from Paradox of Motion; Winona Madison-Sauer, WMS Portrait #3; Kara Taylor,  Whisper (detail); Erik Peckar, Double Tractor; Marie-Louise Rouff, Evening Reds.