Rose Wylie: picky people notice..., | Viewing Room

This online presentation features a focused selection of works from Rose Wylie’s current solo exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (S.M.A.K.), the artist’s first museum show in Belgium.

Installation view, Rose Wylie: picky people notice...,, S.M.A.K., Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent, 2022. Photo by Dirk Pauwels

“Just as for John Cage any sound could become music, for Rose Wylie anything could become the raw material of a kind of materialised wonder, an invitation to transform our fractured digital reality and the perforations of memory into a drawing or painting.”

—Philippe Van Cauteren, artistic director, S.M.A.K.

Rose Wylie

OUT NOW, GARDEN FLOWERS, Feb 5, 2022, 2022

Oil on canvas

60 1/2 x 72 1/4 inches (153.7 x 183.4 cm)

Inquire

Among the works on view are a new group of paintings that were made in Wylie’s home, a seventeenth-century house in Kent, England, in 2022.

Often painting through the night and in different rooms of the house, Wylie approaches her medium in a manner that represents the solitude and confinement felt by so many.

Exterior view of Rose Wylie’s studio, 2019. Photo by Tim Gutt

“January was hardly over when I saw these flowers coming out in the garden. As it seemed far too early, I thought I’d record this as a global warming declaration, and reached for my camera, paused, and decided a drawing would be more appropriate as I am a drawer and a painter.”

—Rose Wylie

Rose Wylie

OUT NOW, COW PARSLEY AND JAPONICA, Feb 5, 2022, 2022

Oil on canvas in (2) two parts

Each panel: 60 1/4 x 72 inches (153 x 183 cm)

Inquire

Drawing is an important aspect of Wylie’s practice—once she has selected an image or a topic, she typically makes numerous drawings on that theme as a kind of mnemonic exercise from which her paintings eventually emerge.

Rose Wylie

My House Front, and Back, 2022

Coloured pencil

Overall: 14 1/2 x 19 7/8 inches (36.8 x 50.5 cm)
Framed: 19 7/8 x 25 1/2 inches (50.5 x 64.8 cm)

Inquire

Rose Wylie

Yellow Crown Imperial with More Flowers, c. 2003

Felt pen on lined paper

11 3/4 x 8 1/4 inches (29.7 x 21 cm)
Framed: 17 x 13 3/4 inches (43.3 x 34.8 cm)

Inquire

Rose Wylie

Yellow Crown Imperial in Garden, c. 2003

Felt pen on lined paper

11 3/4 x 8 1/4 inches (29.7 x 21 cm)
Framed: 17 x 13 5/8 inches (43.1 x 34.7 cm)

Inquire

Installation view, Rose Wylie: picky people notice...,, S.M.A.K., Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent, 2022. Photo by Dirk Pauwels

“The image is arrived at through many drawings, evolving from a process of observation, personality, and response: keeping something of the original subject, but hoping for a transformation into a poetic and especial ‘particular,’ free from conventional representation.”

—Rose Wylie

Rose Wylie

Doodlebug with Black Border, 2022

Oil, pencil, and collage on paper

23 1/4 x 33 1/8 inches (59.2 x 84 cm)
Framed: 28 7/8 x 38 5/8 inches (73.4 x 98.2 cm)

Inquire

“The doodlebug is pretty universal. It stands in for a universal fear of something in the sky. It could include the medieval dragon, which like the doodlebug, had its flames attached… I like things that fly. But generally, it’s butterflies, birds, angels, bats…. But I think aeroplanes are hugely good as well.”

—Rose Wylie

Installation view, Rose Wylie: picky people notice...,, S.M.A.K., Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent, 2022. Photo by Dirk Pauwels

Rose Wylie

Red Doodlebug and Triple Pearls, 2022

Oil on canvas in (2) two parts

Left: 61 x 72 1/4 inches (155 x 183.5 cm)
Right: 61 1/8 x 72 1/2 inches (155.4 x 184 cm)
Overall: 61 1/8 x 144 3/4 inches (155.4 x 367.5 cm)

Inquire

Rose Wylie

Polaroid Camera, Wind Blown Hair, 2022

Oil on canvas

61 1/2 x 72 1/4 inches (156.3 x 183.5 cm)

Inquire

Rose Wylie

Black Hand, study for painting HAND, 2022

Oil on paper

29 7/8 x 22 inches (75.8 x 55.8 cm)
Framed: 35 3/8 x 27 5/8 inches (90 x 70.1 cm)

Inquire

Rose Wylie: picky people notice..., is on view at S.M.A.K., Ghent, through April 30, 2023

Learn More