Judi Rotenberg: Recent Work

Essay by Martha Oaks, Chief Curator at the Cape Ann Museum, excerpted from the catalogue published in conjunction with the 2022 exhibition of the same name, held at the Cape Ann Museum in Gloucester, MA, April 30 – July 3, 2022.

The Cape Ann Museum is committed to exhibiting artwork that reflects the accomplishments of artists working in and around Cape Ann today and to expanding its permanent collection of works by contemporary artists. Among the most accomplished in this large and diverse group of individuals is Judi Rotenberg. A lifelong summer resident of Rockport, a highly respected gallery owner and one of the area’s most gifted painters, Rotenberg currently works on a large scale, creating vibrant canvases that capture the essence of life in floral still lifes. It is a genre that Rotenberg has perfected over the past 40 years and, in a community which has long favored landscapes and seascapes, a genre which sets her apart from other artists working on Cape Ann, now and in the past.

Working in acrylic, Judi Rotenberg’s recent paintings are unabashedly beautiful, brimming with color and life. Although she admits to trying to say a lot with a little, Judi’s canvases are rich in detail, from the foreground and the table on which a vase of flowers sits, through the center of the canvas with its explosion of colors and shapes, to the top of the composition where Judi sometimes includes glimpses of her studio or the view out over Rockport Harbor. In speaking of her work, Rotenberg notes that they are “not florals in the traditional sense. Rather, they are color compositions expressing the contrasting ideas of fragility and strength. In them I have surrendered the force of gravity to color, letting the drips of paint seek their own boundaries.”

With the early encouragement of her mother Fay and her father the American Impressionist Harold Rotenberg (Figure 7), and more recently that of her own family, Judi Rotenberg has lived a life immersed in art. As a teenager, Judi took drawing classes at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She went on to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Boston University where she studied painting with Reed Kay and David Aaronson (both of whom had studied with Judi’s father). She also studied at the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and privately with Impressionist François Gall in Paris and Boston Expressionist Henry Schwartz. Here on Cape Ann, Judi benefited from instruction from artists/teachers Albert Alcalay, Barbara Swan and George Demetrios. In addition to her father, Judi credits three artists with influencing her work: “Van Gogh for his emotion, Matisse for his mastery of color, and Rembrandt for his use and control of light.” Over the past half century, Judi’s work has been shown widely in solo and group exhibitions; in 2012-2013, she had the great honor of being selected as a copyist at the Louvre in Paris (Figure 8).

In 1966, still in her early 20s and firmly committed to a life in art, Judi and her brother Jon opened a gallery in Dock Square in Rockport which they called the Square Circle. The gallery (which had been their father’s studio) sold paintings as well as jewelry and gifts. Today, more than 50 years later, it is still in operation, an anchor in downtown Rockport. Building on the Square Circle, in 1971, Judi opened the Judi Rotenberg Gallery at 130 Newbury Street in Boston’s Back Bay, an audacious venture at the time for a young woman.

Initially, Judi sold her own work from the Newbury Street gallery, depicting lively street scenes of Boston and Cape Ann, many of them watercolor on rice paper, and, of course, still lifes. In time, she began showing work by other artists in that gallery. Her focus quickly fell into two categories: one that she called The Heritage project which featured artwork by mid-20th century contemporary artists, among them her father, painter Jason Berger, sculptor Marianna Pineda, and sculptor and painter Dorothy Gillespie. Her second focus was on young artists new to Boston who worked in a range of mediums and filled a void in the city’s art scene. Over time, Judi also showcased the work of artists connected to Cape Ann, many of whom became close friends including Oliver Balf, Myra Hall, Charles Movalli and Zygmund Jankowski. In selecting artists to represent, Judi admits to seeking out individuals who, through their work, would “contribute to the dialogue of contemporary painting.” In 2000, Judi turned the gallery over to her daughter Abigail Ross Goodman who ran the business until 2010.

Since the early 1980s, as she raised a family, ran her Boston gallery and painted, Judi has returned to still lifes over and over, each time bringing renewed enthusiasm and creativity to the studio and to her work. It is fitting that Judi traces her love of painting flowers back to an early Art in Bloom installation at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, a program that pairs masterpieces in the museum’s collection with specially designed floral arrangements. Over the years, as she has focused more intently on still lifes, Judi’s compositions have become looser and more expressive and her canvases larger. Formal backgrounds featuring draped material gave way to abstract shapes and recently flowers have taken over the composition, engulfing the entire canvas. Color plays an important part in her compositions and helps keep her work fresh and engaging. In 2001, Judi began a series of compositions which she called Song of Songs. Each canvas incorporated flowers with a passage from the Hebrew poem Song of Songs, which is often sung after the passing of a loved one. This series is particularly moving.

Rotenberg’s recent paintings have a strong sculptural sense about them, achieved by first sketching the composition in a neutral paint color on the canvas. Judi loves to draw and delights in the push and pull between her drawings and her paintings. In coming to a canvas, she does not always know what she is going to paint but rather, “I listen to an internal rhythm.” From the sketch, sometimes working with more than one floral arrangement, she builds out the painting using a full palette of colors and pays careful attention to light and shadows along with the individuality of each flower. There is what Judi calls a “controlled freedom” about her compositions and she readily admits that she needs to be deliberate in her work so as not to get lost in the painting. She also admits that it can sometimes be a challenge to pull a composition together, particularly those featuring a range of flower types, each with its individual characteristics. As an extremely thoughtful person, it is not surprising that each of Judi’s paintings is invested with great meaning. Often the flowers are arranged by her husband, Ede, sometimes gathered from their garden in Rockport. Other times bouquets are gifts from her children marking a special occasion. In one painting of a cascade of white orchids, the purple background is the same shade of purple that Judi wore to her daughter’s wedding. While Judi might not plan what she is going to paint, nothing is unintentional in her finished works.

From her father, Judi inherited a remarkable work ethic which has benefited her career greatly. Working to music, she spends hours in her Rockport and Boston studios, sometimes going back to a composition after the original flowers are gone, always mindful of when to stop. The result is a remarkable body of work that dazzles the beholder and grows more powerful with each canvas. Over the past two years as the pandemic has ravaged this country and the world, each of us has looked in different places for solace and support, and, for many, turning to the arts has been a blessing. Judi’s recent paintings are transformative, able to take us beyond our day-to-day concerns to a world of peace and beauty. “Having experienced turbulent times” Judi notes, “I am driven to create beauty and peace with my canvases and thrilled to see those aspects shared with others.”

Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, landscape and seascape paintings have dominated Cape Ann’s art scene, and, for good reason, given the natural beauty of the area and the long tradition of such works that have been created here. In this respect, Judi Rotenberg’s recent paintings stand out from the crowd, a departure from the usual fare. Unconventional, bright and uplifting, Judi’s work adds a new and important chapter to the history of art on Cape Ann, one which celebrates the artist whose deeply personal works are meant to evoke a response from the viewer. The tradition of artists working on Cape Ann across all genres and in all mediums is a strong one, and through her work, Judi Rotenberg has earned a place among the most accomplished of these artists.

—Martha Oaks, Chief Curator,
Cape Ann Museum
April 2022

More about Judi Rotenberg:

The Living Still Life: A Daughter’s Observations — Catalog essay by Abigail Ross Goodman.