Chestnut Hill artist a true Renaissance woman

“I’m not a painter of people,” Chestnut Hill artist Barbara Rosin observed in her poem, Landscapes of My Mind. “For now,” the poet continues, “it’s enough for me to … envision a landscape where people journey freely.”

Rosin is literally a Renaissance woman. Not only is she multi-talented, intellectual, acutely attuned to issues both local and global, but also she spends a part of every year in Italy.

“I have an Italian fascination,” Rosin confesses, tracing back to an artist’s residency in Assisi 10 years ago. Asked to do a subsequent show there, she found the negotiations difficult since she spoke no Italian and the Italians spoke no English. Rosin whisked herself off for language lessons, an interest she continues, engaging in intensive study at Todi, near Assisi, when she is abroad. She has even developed her own Italian-American network here, illustrating poems written by Americans (many of whom live in Philadelphia) of Italian descent.

“There are two things I like to do at the end of the day in Italy,” Rosin notes, displaying her charming pen-and-ink drawings. “I like to go into the beautiful little churches. She sits quietly, observing “the same ladies who show up every afternoon.” Then, the artist is off to the park, where yet another set of “regulars” gathers daily. “It’s something we don’t have here — people meeting at the same place every day.”

For someone whose sublime, painted landscapes are empty except for the presence of the artist herself, Rosin has a remarkable touch when she chooses to portray people. Her drawings are so different from her paintings that one might surmise she is two very different artists. The artist who draws scenes chock-full of chatty villagers, seems leagues removed from the serene painter who gives us fields and meadows and mountains in lemon yellow, soft lavender and pale aqua. Rosin’s sensibility may be Italian, but her palette is pure French Impressionism.

“I have been drawing my whole life, since I first picked up a pencil,” Rosin admits, both from her imagination and from “what’s in front of me. I’m not a realist; even my still lifes are from my imagination. It’s interesting to me how some artists must have something in front of them, but I can’t have anything in front of me.

“I think I had a fantasy that I would be a fashion illustrator,” Rosin recalls, speaking of her childhood growing up in Cheltenham. (And it’s easy to imagine this still-glamorous woman in that industry.) But the Saturday morning classes at the Cheltenham Art Center and Tyler seduced her. “I like the smell of oil,” she adds, noting that ultimately it became her medium of choice. While at Fleisher and at Penn, Rosin concentrated on printmaking.

She spent several years as an art therapist at the Philadelphia Psychiatric Center, now the Belmont Center for Comprehensive Medicine. “I’m interested in psychology, literature and all things having to do with the mind and how people think. Art was a tool for patients to express things they could not otherwise express. It was very fulfilling.”

Rosin moved on to teach painting in the Jewish Community Center’s Jacob and Esther Stiffel Senior Center on Porter Street in south Philadelphia. Later, she administered the adult education programs at Congregation Adath Jeshurun in Elkins Park, responsible for a citywide network. For 15 years, Rosin oversaw a curriculum that included art and music appreciation, film studies, world affairs, literature. Rosin worked with “younger older people, recently retired, very culturally aware.”

But her palette called and Rosin took a sabbatical just “to see if I wanted to devote myself to painting full time.” This is a woman who embraces opportunity — for her 60th birthday, she gathered with family and friends in New Orleans, driving down so she could linger at beds-and-breakfasts throughout the South, ever observing and stoking her powerful powers of creativity.

Since giving herself over to the paintbrush entirely, Rosin has never looked back, although she continues to teach one day a week at the Stiffel Senior Center.

“I get inspired by landscape,” Rosin explains, turning to her dreamy, impressionistic compositions with their soft pastel hues. “I have been lucky enough to travel.”

Rosin has painted in the fields where Van Gogh and Pissarro painted. Now, she principally does watercolors or sketches on the spot and returns to her studio to retrieve the feelings. Her compositions are “totally imaginary” and her colors are exquisite.

Rosin works primarily in oil on primed paper. “I love the feel of thick paper,” she explains, citing the slight give of stretched canvas as a brush goes into it. “I got rid of the easel,” she shrugs, preferring to tack Arches watercolor paper directly to a white wall in her studio.

Rosin also does drawings and paintings on commission. “There’s no obligation to buy,” she promises, unless the patron is absolutely happy. It’s hard to imagine one wouldn’t be thrilled by highly-colored watercolors of bustling, picturesque old country villages, which Rosin customizes to fit the ethnic background and occupation of grandmother’s or grandfather’s family.

Having recently escorted a group of her Stiffel students to the Barnes Foundation, Rosin reveals another facet of her activist side. Now a staunch member of the Friends of the Barnes, Rosin has been visiting the collection since she was a teenager.

“I believer very, very strongly that it should stay where it is. That’s what Dr. Barnes wanted.” Rosin acknowledges that the paintings could be moved and the galleries reconstructed, but the connection to the surrounding arboretum would be lost. “You can’t duplicate the setting. It’s the single most important museum in the whole world,” Rosin opines, speaking as a painter.

“If it moves,” Rosin insists, “it’s not the Barnes Foundation anymore. It’s Epcot Center, it’s Disney World. The judge did not order the Barnes to move. He only granted permission that, as a last resort, such a move would be allowed.”

Rosin has a current exhibit of her recent paintings and drawings at The Frame House, 7908 High School Rd. in Elkins Park. The show will run at least through Nov. 30 and possibly through mid-December. Call 215-635-1140.