Shane Guffogg: A Rose is a Rose is a Rose

In this episode, Shane Guffogg and I explore his painting series, “A Rose is a Rose, is a Rose”. The series is partly inspired by Gertrude Stein’s sentence, A rose is a rose is a rose, from the 1913 poem, “Sacred Emily” which appeared in the 1922 book, “Geography and Plays”. In Guffogg’s case, the rose symbolism is also inspired by his orchard located at his ranch in Central California where he now has over 100 fruit trees of different varieties. 

Guffogg’s paintings play with the sentence that Stein so passionately defended during her lecture at Oxford University, where she said, “When the Romantics used the word “rose” they were referencing an actual rose that was red, which has inhabited English poetry for a hundred years!” In Stein’s case, she was referencing “that things are what they are.” She wanted to take the word away from the laws of identity by stating the first rose was about the name of a person, the second rose a nod to the flower and the third rose referenced a concept. This was the beginning of the universal debate. Guffogg, recalled while at Cal Arts, there was a similar controversy in the air about the conceptual landscape for creating art. After rereading Stein’s poetry, an inner dialogue came about – the artist has proposed the question to his viewer by way of his paintings, prompting the audience to reconsider Stein’s poem and contemplate the essence of how we consider identity through language – is a rose a rose? Regardless of this discussion, the paintings reveal a frozen moment, depicted the delicacy and fragility of life through line, color, and lyrical shapes, all distinct parts of Guffogg's silent poems. The paintings also unveil what could be deciphered like a musical score that illuminates the human need for expression. This moment shines through their refined beauty, turning within to recall their own inner wisdom nature provides us.

Shane Guffogg is an American artist who looks through the lens of humanity at civilizations, both past, and present, and views time as threads that connect all people. His work is a visual language that is informed by the spiritualism of abstraction and the realism of the old masters. These two ideas are usually seen as separate but Guffogg fuses them seamlessly into works that transcend and become testaments to thoughts that inform us of who we are in the 21st century.

To learn more about Shane Guffogg visit, www.shaneguffogg.com

Music by April Aberdeen and Shane Guffogg

Special thanks to Greta Stromquist

See more images from this episode: www.vcprojects.art