The Naming: Rosina

Nicole Rose Gelormino

Rosina

2020

oil on canvas

48 x 36”

The torso of a seal twists and bends in a dance, defying materiality as she dissolves into light and casts a shadow of white against an orange sky.. Her heavy quartz head emerges from the leather gray neck, charged with luminous power. Her vapid arms swivel up to the turquoise sky like vapid, sulfurous flames. Her kirpan tail balances on the point of a sacred punjabi blade. The inspiration for this figure came from a beautiful, moving video of my sister, a dancer, performing in her kitchen. I began the painting in self-evacuation from smoke due to fires in Sonoma County. The drive was full of competing turquoise and orange skies. My daughter spent lots of time exploring rocks in dried up river beds of Humboldt County, many of which were composed of quartz, a stone attributed with clarifying and generative powers.