SAMANTHA ROSENWALD (born in 1994, Los Angeles) received her BA in Art History from Vassar College in 2016 and her MFA in Fine Art from California College of the Arts in 2018. Rosenwald has shown with galleries such as Eve Leibe Gallery (London, UK), Zevitas Marcus (Los Angeles, CA), Plan X Gallery (Milan, Italy), and Mostyn (Wales, UK), and has been featured in publications such as New American Paintings, Art Maze Magazine, and Voyage LA. Rosenwald is based in LA and works primarily in paint and colored pencil. By threading together contemporary culture, visual puns and the dogmas of art history, she creates absurd, personal and darkly funny portraits which illustrate what it feels like to be alive.
Samantha Rosenwald in conversation with
Aino Frilander, Helsinki-based critic & curator.
AF:
You were born and raised in Los Angeles, right? What was life like growing up?
SR:
Yes! I was born and raised in LA, actually days after the massive 1994 earthquake. My mom always said I was “born with a bang” which, of course, is a very mom-like thing to say. I grew up going to a Jewish day school in Westwood with my brother, Daniel. He was always the cool kid in class and I was the very odd, funny one. I was super into musical theater, which is now very embarrassing and I was extremely anal about doing my homework before I allowed myself to watch TV and eat after-school snacks. Despite being a super strange child and sometimes the butt of jokes in school, I had a lot of equally strange friends and was generally content being the chubby funny girl.
AF:
I love mom jokes! I’m curious about your love of musical theatre – is there an anecdote you could share? And were you also into art already then?
SR:
I was HUGE into musical theater, and even did sketch comedy all the way through college. Extreme dork level. And I would always play the male parts too. I had a super low singing voice so I always had to stuff my underwear under my costume and glue beards or mustaches to my face. But yes, I was at the same time always doing art. I would draw constantly as a little kid. I even had one of those plastic Fisher Price desks set up in my house and I called it my “work desk.” I specifically remember being assigned to paint a self-portrait in kindergarten. I drew a full naked human body pissing on the floor.
AF:
That’s awesome. A bonus question: What was your favorite after school snack??
SR:
My favorite after school snack was farmer cheese latkes (supremely jewish snack) that my mom would make and put in a tupperware container for the ride home from school.
AF:
You have described yourself as “a frizzy-haired, comically chubby chicken nugget, born and raised into the glossy, chill-centric culture of Los Angeles”, which is hilarious but also kind of devastating in a culture that’s so harsh about how a girl should be. Where did that description come from?
SR:
Haha yes, in retrospect, it’s hilarious but also pretty heartbreaking to think of little Samantha covering up her lack of confidence with humor. But to be quite honest, what has changed? There’s a memory that stands out to me that pretty succinctly sums up this description I gave myself: When I was in maybe 1st grade, I remember wearing a new shirt from Limited Too (which I was super proud of) and had some of my belly fat hanging out the bottom of the shirt. Some kids started laughing at how chubby I was and started poking my stomach and saying mean things, and in response, I tried to sound powerful and confident and said, “I may be chubby but at least I’m strong!!” Then everyone went silent for a second and then started hysterically laughing at me. Like my impression of a confident person was totally unconvincing, or that I just sounded so pathetic, the other kids couldn’t help but laugh. Either way, I think that’s when I decided to stick to comedy as a protective shield.
AF:
Being funny can be super rewarding but it’s also a kind of lonely MO, right? Do you ever think about if life might have been different without having to develop that survival strategy? Not to get too deep!
SR:
Haha, deep is okay! I probably would have learned to internalize emotion and understand my feelings a lot sooner without developing a comedic crutch. It took me a long time to express my feelings sincerely, or to even really know they were there. I think my friends and peers have gotten so used to me being funny and goofy, that even now when I say something candidly or seriously, they laugh and say, “sorry sorry it was just the way you said it!”
AF:
When you think of those chill LA girls, is there someone specific who embodies that ideal for you?
SR:
Hmm I can’t say there’s one specific girl who was the gold standard “cool girl” for me. Aside from maybe a few popular girls in my grade who had straight hair (as opposed to my frizzy curls). I think to my little kid brain, and still, to my 26 year old brain now, the chill LA girl is sort of a composite image of many women -- women from elementary school I thought were pretty, pretty ladies on TV, women on billboards and magazines -- all forming into a singular ideal in my young, chubby brain.
AF:
How has that ideal girl influenced you and your work?
SR:
The ideal girl plays a huge role in my work. Because my work is largely about the obsessive struggle to obtain perfection – whether it be beauty, coolness, smarts, or talent – the ideal girl plays right in. She is one of the things my paintings are mocking and simultaneously, asymptotically striving to be.
AF:
Why did you choose to work with colored pencils on canvas? And what is it like to make work like this – how long does it take and how numb do your fingers get from gripping the pencil??
SR:
I chose to work with colored pencils, full honesty, because I sucked at painting with acrylics. The paint would dry too fast and was so hard and plastic-y, it just didn’t feel right. I’d been making drawings on paper simultaneously while trying to paint, and was just like fuck this, what if I just drew on the canvas? It took me a while to figure out how to prep the canvas to allow for a dry medium to hold to the canvas surface, but now I have a very meticulous system.
AF:
What is that system like?
SR:
I start by building and stretching the canvas. I have to stretch the canvas super tight so it doesn’t loosen in the gessoing and coloring process. Then I apply about four coats of gesso, wet sanding in between each layer. The wet sanding is the real bitch, it hurts my muscles (as I’m extremely out of shape lol) and it takes forever. After the gesso, I apply about three coats of modeling paste to give the canvas a porous and paper-like surface. Without the modeling paste, the pencil wouldn’t be able to stick to the canvas and hold its richness. Again I’m wet sanding between each layer. Once all is dry, I do a little pencil test to see if the canvas is ready, and then I move onto the drawing!
The process though, takes a pretty long time – even before I get to the coloring itself. I’d say a mid-to-large size painting takes me approximately a month, depending on the level of detail. I’m also starting to notice early signs of carpal tunnel in my right hand. My boyfriend, Ben, calls my right hand my “money hand” and always offers to help massage it, forces me to take breaks, soak my hand in salt water, and do finger exercises. It makes me feel like my hand is a pro wrestler, haha, but it is very sweet of him to look after my drawing hand!
AF:
I love the image of your hand as a pro wrestler! I’m glad he’s taking good care of it!
SR:
Aww me too, I’m very grateful for him.
AF:
I think you talked somewhere about the relationship between the colored pencils and the trope of an anal, straight-A girl. I love that subversion/slight weirdness of it. How would you describe the power of embracing that stereotype?
SR:
Aw thank you! Yeah, that’s exactly it! I have always been extremely anal – about schoolwork, about trying to appear cool, later in life I was obsessive about starving myself to be skinny: a disorder I have fortunately overcome. Anal intensity to be some ideal of greatness has always driven my life. And that’s fucked up! So when I couldn’t perfect acrylic on canvas, and I switched to pencil on canvas, it clicked and became an intentional technique. The small, unsophisticated colored pencil being worked ferociously against a canvas (a signifier of high art and mastery) was the perfect way of mirroring my frenzied drive to be beautiful or talented or cool. I also think it’s funny and poetic to attempt Renaissancian subject matter with a colored pencil. It’s like embarking on a task with an inadequate tool, a set up for failure.
"The power play within cuteness and the blend of mania, comedy, and inferiority in zaniness seemed all wrapped up in Peepee the caterpillar. She’s a clownish lady whose cuteness and outward humor conceals a deeper feeling of pain and embarrassment. To me, she is a representation of how I feel when I use humor to compensate for anxiety, and she is also an allegory of all women."
AF:
What draws you to that subject matter? I’d imagine your training in art history is part of it? In your hands it tends to get subverted in the most delicious ways – the Medusa head being a bathroom candle; the vanitas that includes a tipped-over Fiji water bottle.
SR:
Yes! I’m greatly inspired by art history and the ways in which the female is forced to the role of object: a thing that the male creator dominates and manipulates to his taste. I like to use certain art historical tropes as a starting point and then insert jokes, puns, and burns into the compositions. In a lot of ways, I think of my paintings as stand-up comedy routines and try to go about the compositions with the sly and intentional cadence of a comedian.
With the Medusa as a candle, I wanted to highlight the female as commodity object. And what better commodity object is there than an enormous burning candle you can find in an Urban Outfitters or on Etsy?
AF:
Your upcoming exhibition will feature the anthropomorphic caterpillar character, Peepee. Can you talk a little bit about him/her/it? (It doesn’t seem like an “it”!)
SR:
Aw, Peepee is very near to my heart. She is, in a lot of ways, me! She came about sort of randomly, actually. I was drawing out my plan for a painting, and then next to it, I drew a funny clownish looking bug and I laughed so hard (all by myself) I just had to make it. The name, Peepee, comes from a nickname my boyfriend sometimes calls me; a super strange, potty-language nickname. Once I drew her on paper, I started to think about the aesthetic genres of cute and zany (which I think about a lot in my work). The power play within cuteness and the blend of mania, comedy, and inferiority in zaniness seemed all wrapped up in Peepee the caterpillar. She’s a clownish lady whose cuteness and outward humor conceals a deeper feeling of pain and embarrassment. To me, she is a representation of how I feel when I use humor to compensate for anxiety, and she is also an allegory of all women – women who must entertain, perform, and serve a crowd, leaving a deep interior pain to fester within. I am also okay with people not seeing the sort of dark and painful side of Peepee, if people enjoy her company, that’s more than enough for me too.
AF:
How are the Peepee pieces related to or different from the rest of your work?
SR:
Peepee is definitely a stand-out series of paintings. I use humor a lot in my work, but in a more subtle way. A comedy that is more obviously tangled in anxiety, discomfort, and pain. Peepee is sort of the stand-out extreme on the spectrum of comedy in my recent work. But she is, clearly, a clown. And isn’t there something intrinsically sad and scary about clowns?
AF:
Do you think we’ll see more of Peepee in the future? And aside from Peepee, what are you working with right now?
SR:
I’m not sure if I’ll be drawing Peepee again! She is a special lady but maybe her four panel saga is the perfect short story for her sweet and pathetic little life. Currently, I’m working towards an upcoming solo show with Annarumma Gallery in Naples. The show is called Penis Envy and revolves around female rage, the flipping of dominant male power structures, and the fetishization of the female body, all through a mocking and art-historical frame. The painting I’m working on now is a larger-than-life close up of a woman’s boobs, stomach, and vagina made totally out of fruits and vegetables.
AF:
What is it like to do your first solo show in your hometown?
SR:
I’m super excited to have a show here in LA with Steve! Even though the pandemic makes openings a bit less celebratory, I am very hyped to be able to show my mom, my brother, and my 93 year old grandma the work I made.