Two Antelopes 1999

Here's a description of Rosemary Karuga's 'Two Antelopes,' made with cut and pasted paper. Imagine Karuga finding these bits of paper, maybe discarded from magazines, each with their own history, texture and color. It's interesting how she builds up these animals, the antelopes, using shards of color, almost like mosaic. She has this knack for making something whole out of fragments. The background has a tighter rhythm with what looks like foliage, really drawing the figures forward. I wonder what Rosemary Karuga was thinking as she was making this. Was she thinking about the antelopes themselves, or about the shapes and colors of the paper? Maybe it was both. You see, she’s not just representing something, she’s also building something new, a new way of seeing. It reminds me of Matisse's cut-outs. Like him, she’s in conversation with other artists across time and place, all trying to figure out how to translate the world into something new, something felt.