Jo Ann RothsChild
Alone and Together
01. 12/30/2024, oil on canvas, 10 x 8 inches, $1400.00
02. Hope, 2024, mixed media on canvas, 92.5 x 95.5 inches, $53,250.00
03. 1/12/2025, oil on linen, 12 x 9 inches, $1800.00
04. July 15, 2024, oil on canvas, 24 x 18 inches, $3400.00
05. Watermelon Wine, 2023, mixed media on canvas, 82 x 96 inches, $47,250.00
06. A Hopeful Time, 12/29/2024, oil on canvas, 10 x 8 inches, $1400.00
07. 12/27/2024, oil on linen, 14 x 11 inches, $2000.00
08. 1/2/2025, oil on linen, 11 x 14 inches, $2000.00
09. Oddities from the Harbor (Guston), 2025, oil on linen, 18 x 24 inches, $3400.00
10. Naked Again, 1/3/2024, oil on linen, 24 x 18 inches, $3400.00
11. 1/4/2025, oil on canvas, 12 x 12 inches, $2000.00
12. 12/26/2024, oil on canvas, 14 x 11 inches, $2000.00
13. Leah’s Birthday, AP, 2025, lithograph, 15 x 22.5 inches, $350.00
14. With Eddy and Ella at the Circus, AP (Ed. 5), 2025, lithograph, 22.5 x 25 inches, $575.00
15. A Gathering of Treasures, AP (Ed. 5), 2025, lithograph, 10.125 x 23.5 inches, $350.00
16. Dressing Up, AP (Ed. 10), 2025, lithograph, 20 x 15.75 inches, $350.00
17. Near Lake Michigan, AP, 2024, lithograph, 9 x 6.5 inches, $125.00
18. Discoveries, AP, (Ed. 10) 2024, lithograph, 17 x 11.5 inches, $325.00
19. Persevere, AP, 2025, lithograph, 24 x 30 inches, $700.00
20. Lifting and Flying, AP (Ed. 4), 2025, lithograph, 11.5 x 15 inches, $325.00
21. Like John Marin, AP (Ed. 9), 2025, lithograph, 11 x 15 inches, $325.00
22. Living for a Long Time, AP (Ed. 5), 2025, lithograph, 23.75 x 18.5 inches, $550.00
23. New Route, AP, 2025, lithograph, 26 x 24 inches, $700.00
24. Below the Moon, AP, 2025, lithograph, 15 x 19 inches, $500.00
25. Putting Whiskey in My Whiskey, 2024, oil, mixed media on canvas, 66.5 x 71.5 inches, NFS
26. September 1, 2024, oil on linen, 9 x 12 inches, $1800.00
27. Deck Chairs Rearranged, 2025, oil on linen, 14 x 11 inches, $2000.00
28. December 7, 2024, oil on linen, 12 x 9 inches, $1800.00
29. Suggestive 1/11/2025, oil on canvas, 10 x 8 inches, $1400.00
30. 12/25/2024 (Hodgkins), oil on linen, 24 x 16 inches, $3400.00
Jo Ann Rothschild’s lithographs were printed by Stacy Friedman at the New Impressions Workshop in Somerville, MA.
Alone and Together
For me, Painting is a solitary activity. The paintings are my take on the world, my take on myself, my take on painting. I’m interested in what other people observe, but they aren’t around when I work. “I talk to the Painting. The painting talks to me.”¹
These take two distinct forms. First are oils, made on the stretcher, always rectangular. They exist in both large and small scale and are improvisational from beginning to end. Grids are rare. There is never an outline to be filled in. The emphasis, as in the black and white prints, is on touch and play. Color is important whether muted or bold. The freedom of the mark responds to the regularity of the support.
The second category of paintings consists of large scale unstretched mixed media canvases. These often start with a chalk line grid on raw cotton duck. The canvas is not regular and is more likely to be a quadrangle than a rectangle. The grid provides the armature that irregular edges lack. Sometimes two lines arrived at differently, compete for primacy of logical placement. Which one is right? The paint, the drawing and the collaged elements respond to this grid. The chalk often diffuses forming an atmosphere of color on the raw canvas.
In contrast to painting Printmaking is collaborative. There are almost always other people working on their own projects in a print studio. The background hum of other artists adds life and pleasure, to the process.
I have been working with Stacy Friedman first at Mixit Studios, and more recently in her and her husband’s New Impressions workshop, for 7 years. The most intense exchanges happen on the big monoprints. Stacy rolls the ink, places the paper, suggests techniques or tools. I do the drawing, add or subtract ink and I make the decisions. But these are better and richer for Stacy’s vision and skill. You can see her SF chop on each print.
I love color and I love black and white. I have made Black and white etchings since 1971 when the etching, Deer Rhythms, was my first mature piece. The language of marking and of grids, that I discovered that year, continues more than fifty years later. In mixed media paintings, the grid is often explicit. It is understood and implied in most oils and prints.
I made my first lithograph in Havana at the Taller Graphico in the early years of this century working with very gifted printers. I didn’t make another one until Stacy and I started working on lithos last year. Lithographs are temperamental. I make the plate or the stone, but Stacy has to intuit what I mean to say and pull the prints. She may add definition, adjust spots that I want darker or lighter, or instruct me, in what I have to do, to bring the image closer to my intention. Working together is always a pleasure.
Jo Ann Rothschild Bio
Jo Ann Rothschild is an abstract painter. She lives and works in Boston. She is the first recipient of the Maud Morgan Purchase Prize of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and a recipient of a Grant in Painting from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Pubic Collections besides the BMFA include: The Fogg, DeCordova and Rose Museums and the Taller Graphico in Havana, The National Gallery in Washington, and the Danforth Museum in Framingham, MA.
Rothschild has been included in exhibitions at The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, The Rose Museum, The Drawing Center and the Painting Center both in New York, and the Taller Graphico. She has also shown in Chicago, The National Gallery in Washington, as well as multiple cities in Cuba and Germany. Her first retrospective was at Gallery Imago in the National Theatre Building in Havana.
Her first teacher was Leo Garel. She studied painting with Pat Adams at Bennington College. Her MFA is from the joint program of the Boston Museum School and Tufts University. Her masters thesis concentrated on the Fra Angelico fresco cycle in San Marco in Florence. Rothschild founded the Art Program at The Pine Street Inn, the largest homeless shelter in New England.