Artist Statement

My series of paintings in monumental format is a specialty of painting I grew to love as a result of my study in Germany. Having been classically trained, I was equipped to move into a freer sort of painting that enabled spontaneity in the form and anatomy of the figures, vegetation, and the rich fabrics and patterns, all of which evolve as I work. I emphasize movement and intense color while maintaining the planned order necessary to create complicated compositions. I especially enjoy painting narratives that weave a harmony between the Old and New Testament Scriptures.

My art studies were in three schools that embraced three totally different philosophies of working. My earliest study was at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, and  the Art Institute of Chicago. At the first school I learned to paint, at the second I learned to think more deeply about my painting as it related to the history of art in the centuries before me. At my third school, the State Academy of Fine Art in Karlsruhe, Germany, I combined my classical influence with the freedom of my spontaneous compositions and figures. Blending these flowing compositions with refined detail has become nothing short of exhilarating for me as an artist.

It is my desire to draw my viewers into the beauty of a colorful composition as though they were entering a new world. It is also my passion to share an ancient faith in a fresh and vibrant way, displaying a part ancient, part future story, wherein we dwell somewhere between, with our lives connected to the entire narrative.

Rosemarie Adcock

Biography

Rosemarie Adcock was born weeks after her family immigrated to the United States from Germany and Austria through Canada. In addition to theological study at Westminster and Gordon Conwell  Seminaries, she studied at the American Academy of Art in Chicago (1978-80) under Eugene Hall, an apprentice of the Russian painter, Alexander Zlatoff-Mirsky, who was himself an apprentice to the Russian master, Ilya Repin. She also studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA 1987). She received a stipend from the Minister of Culture of Baden-Wurtenberg, Germany, and studied printmaking and monumental painting at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe (1986-88) under the director Klaus Arnold, and also Max Neumann, guest professor for the class of Markus Lupertz.

Rosemarie is a published author and international conference speaker. Her paintings are in numerous private and corporate collections in the United States and Western and Eastern Europe. She has exhibited extensively in the United States and Europe, winning multiple awards. Notable exhibitions include shows at Princeton Theological Seminary, the Museum for Florida Women Artists and twice at the Museum of Florida Art where her work received awards on both occasions. She was awarded two consecutive years of First Place awards at the Illinois State Fair Professional Artist Exhibitions.

Her earlier exhibition of over 120 paintings of Russian peasants toured in the United States and Western Europe for over 7 years. After the resulting acquisition of humanitarian relief assistance of over $1.25 million in gift-in-kind donations for orphans and impoverished Russian families, the artist founded the charitable organization, Arts for Relief and Missions in 1993. Be encouraged by the remarkable story of how this came about at this video link: