Roz Leibowitz

“A painter chooses color. I choose pattern,” says Roz Leibowitz, a New York City-based draftsman whose drawings are filled with intricate serpentine lines and nearly impenetrable layers of border and pattern. “I’m not a formalist, creating art based on composition or color.” Instead, as an artist with masters’ degrees in library science and literacy, Leibowitz more readily identifies with the act of writing in her work. “Most of the time when I’m drawing, I think in terms of narrative,” she says. “My brain goes to stories. To me the drawings are like poems. The patterns are like handwriting.”

"Roselyn Leibowitz and Catherine Redmond have been friends for years, and as friends do, they would often talk about how they imagined their futures. They would discuss how they wanted to live when they were older, and what would make the best balance in a living situation. Both are artists, and agreed they wanted companionship but a great deal of privacy.

"Ms. Leibowitz, who is now 54, and who proudly calls herself “a spinster,” and Ms. Redmond, 65, who is divorced, would often meet for coffee or dinner in the ’90s because they both lived in TriBeCa and shared a work space. “We would sit for hours,” Ms. Leibowitz recalled. “That’s when Catherine and I really became closer friends.”"

"In Roz Leibowitz’s estimation, making art is about “being in [correct] alignment to the cosmic show.” However, her intricate pencil drawings and collages are not portrayals of a fantastical realm but rather depict a curios blend of vernacular culture relating to folk art and folk belief.

"In particular, she is influenced by the Victorian sensibility of ideas and interiors. Her work is compelled by notions of womanhood as expressed in the pseudo-sciences of that period, a time when scientific rationality was emerging as a dominant world view."