Roz Leibowitz (LA)

“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.”

"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."