When you're making art it's like you're in sort of a state … where you make connections in ways that you don't normally make them, that's more like a dream.
Suellen Rocca
Untitled 2020
Oil on canvas
Suellen Rocca
Untitled 2020
Oil on canvas
Suellen Rocca
Untitled 2020
Oil on canvas, four panels
Suellen Rocca
Untitled 2020
Graphite on paper
The development of the image is what's exciting to me and it happens as I'm working. There's an initial image of something that I'm interested in but I don't do studies. I like to work on drawings at the same time I'm working on a painting and they complement each other.
Suellen Rocca
Untitled 2020
Graphite and colored pencil on paper
Suellen Rocca
Untitled 2020
Graphite and colored pencil on paper
Suellen Rocca
Vienna Secession Book Drawings 2020
Graphite and colored pencil on paper mounted to paper, 10 sheets
Suellen Rocca
Untitled 2020
Graphite and colored pencil on paper
[Rocca was a] fiercely original artist whose hieroglyphic, phantasmagoric work poked a finger in the eye of late-20th-century modernist purities.
Suellen Rocca
Fish Dream 1997
Graphite on paper
Suellen Rocca
Double Figure with Fish 2000
Graphite on paper
My work has always been autobiographical.
Suellen Rocca
Fish Dream Painting I 2000–12
Oil on canvas
Suellen Rocca
Fish Dream Painting II 2000–12
Oil on canvas
Suellen Rocca
Fish Dream Painting III 2000–12
Oil on canvas
Suellen Rocca
Fish Dream Painting IV 2000–12
Oil on canvas
Suellen Rocca
Suellen Rocca Fish Dream Painting V 2000–12
Oil on canvas
Suellen Rocca
Fish Dream Painting VI 2000–12
Oil on canvas
Maintained throughout her decades-long career was an unceasing commitment to capturing the perplexities and the appetites of woman. Rocca was never as literal as to conspicuously depict powerlessness or oppression, instead she invented bodies and aggregated signs to wrestle with the ebbing authority of gender in everyday life and the culture at large.
Suellen Rocca
Departure 2012
Oil on canvas
Suellen Rocca
At Sunset 2013
Oil on canvas
Suellen Rocca
Night 2014
Oil on canvas
The imagery in my work from the Hairy Who period was more about external things, things from the culture. The work starting in the early ’80s was more about what was going on with me internally.
Suellen Rocca
Page A 2017
Graphite on paper
Suellen Rocca
Page B 2017
Graphite on paper
Suellen Rocca
Page C 2017
Graphite on paper
Rocca’s wonderfully illogical sense of space and the barbed femininity of her symbols are a winning combination.
Suellen Rocca
Studies for The Mother and the Bed 2019
Graphite and colored pencil on paper, nine sheets
Suellen Rocca
Untitled 2020
Graphite on paper
Suellen Rocca
Untitled 2020
Graphite on paper
Suellen Rocca
Untitled 2020
Graphite on paper
Rocca is giving us a new lexicon with these images, a way of reevaluating the everyday to see its magical worth.
Suellen Rocca
Untitled 2020
Graphite and colored pencil on paper
Suellen Rocca
Untitled 2020
Graphite, colored pencil, and collage on paper
In Memory of Suellen Rocca
October 2, 1943 – March 26, 2020