Her inspiration is life itself
By John Martin for the Bulletin

“When I'm painting, I'm in love.” That's how Bend artist Rosamond Blok describes the way she works.

Her paintings, some of which hang on the walls at Rising Star Stellar Home Furnishings in Bend , are vibrant active, sometimes clever, always vivid images. While some of her paintings are purely abstract, most are a combination of abstract and representational styles, with vigorous brushwork and strong shapes. “I don't paint like this,” she says, and mimes holding a small brush carefully in front of her face, as if she were touching up a Titian. Maybe it's to her creative credit that it's hard to classify or type her work.

The liveliness of Blok 's paintings seems like a natural extension of the artist. When asked what her artistic inspirations were, she doesn't name other painters or schools of painting. Instead, she begins talking about her passions for ice skating, gardening, ping-pong and rapping. This should not be surprising from someone who studied dance as a child and was a dance major at UCLA.

“I pull my paintings from somewhere inside me,” Blok says. Her daughter Leslie , who owns Rising Star along with Blok , adds, “Her paintings are very interior, I think of them as a kind of dream or trance art.” Blok does admit to being inspired by several trips she's made to Europe , mentioning in particular the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao , Portugal.

“As a child,” Blok recounted, “my mother let me paint all over the walls. I had a big Archie and Veronica thing going in my bedroom. I even painted on the bed cover.” Although she didn't receive any formal art training during her school years, she kept up her painting on her own, and has continued to do so all of her adult life.

Although Blok has a small kiln in her studio and sometimes does clay sculpture, as well as occasional line drawings, she works mostly with acrylic paint on canvas. Once in a while she paints with oils, she says “but the turpentine is so hard on my hands. And the fumes are so bad.” She has also done paintings in which she used asphaltum which, she explains, is the tar-like material used to fill cracks in roads. She mentions that she has so many paintings stacked in her studio and garage that she can't even guess at how many there are.

Her painting, Blok explains, is a kind of medicine. “Maybe one day I'll wake up and it's windy or snowing or I'll have a headache. I'll start painting and after a while I just begin to feel better.” And when she paints she does so intensely. She doesn't paint in short bursts, but immerses herself in it for long periods.
Although Rising Star is a great place to go and see many of Blok 's paintings up on the walls, she has also had her work hung at many local restaurants that feature original art. She has had shows at galleries, and she was recently part of a group show by members of Artists Local 101 at Studio 550 in Bend . “People drive here from Portland and all over Washington to buy her paintings,” Leslie notes, “F either like them or they don't” she says, implying that there isn't much middle ground.

When Blok isn't painting or at Rising Star, she is likely to be either ice skating at the Inn of the Seventh Mountain or playing ping-pong at her studio. She is passionate about both activities, as well as gardening, tai and her cat Bobo, who Leslie says, “is the man in her life these days.”

now let's get back to her art>