Stumblebum

The artist’s hand is everywhere visible in the paintings and prints of Susan Rothenberg. A fierce tangle of gestures that resolves slowly into form, Rothenberg’s imagery is most often figurative. Her agitated lines and dense compositions record an intense interrogatory working process as she moves between acutely attuned impulse and intellect. Because her mark is so transparently emotional, Rothenberg’s works feel like intimate confessions. Stumblebum is one of her largest and most ambitious prints, but its varied textures, subtle differentiation of colors, and extravagant movement are typical of all her work. A rich symphony of surfaces, this complex lithograph is the combined result of two printings from two stones, fifteen printings from fifteen stones, and one printing on an offset proofing press. The title character, based on Rothenberg’s drawing of the back of her printer, Keith Brintzenhofe, appears to have stopped just momentarily, eager to move on, literally absorbed by his surroundings.