Rosemary Wilson Sloggatt

Fairy Tale Series Statement

 

As a child in the 1920s, my father saved his lunch money to purchase, for the then princely sum of thirteen dollars, a long-coveted copy of Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates. During my own childhood getting to look at the fearsome illustrations was a treat that involved washed hands and the comfort of my father’s lap. As my father shared the stories, I always asked and was always astonished by his response to my question: “Were they real?”

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“Yes, yes they were,” he told me.

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On Saturday trips to the library my sister my often took out one of the 14 Wizard of Oz books, beautifully illustrated by W.W. Denslow.  Sadly I was too young to read them and my sister didn’t offer, so I made up my own world from the pictures.

 

Growing up in a family of avid readers, I had the characters of L. Frank Baum, the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen as food for my imagination. These same stories have been the inspiration for a series of paintings, prints, books and sculptures I worked on between 1991 and 2014.

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Later, as a young mother, I began creating collages, collecting material until I could find time to work. The Japanese-style books were designed to open so that the pages interrelated depending on how many were seen at a time. The first of them was shown at the Islip Art Museum in 1991. Many of my works are intended to opened and handled.

 

I began my Fairy Tale Series during a monoprint workshop in Philadelphia with Christine Staughton.  Rapunzel Writes a Letter is a series of prints reflecting on how Rapunzel spent her time in the tower. As part of this exploration I have created work based on The Wizard of Oz, Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood. Portraits of the Witch and functional sculptures -- Ogre Vases – are loosely based on a royal family of ogres. Fairy tales excite my imagination. They offer meaning on so many different levels. They call up memories from earliest experience and yet they offer a view to the human experience at a universal level.