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“If you don't keep active when you get old, you bore yourself and bore everybody else around you,” says Orange Artist Maggie Rosso, whose new solo exhibition is proof that the 83-year-old hasn’t been sitting still.
‘Colour, Chaos and Contradictions’ is an exhibition of work that grew out of a trip Maggie made to Rajasthan, India, three years ago. The title reflects Maggie’s experience of the vibrant colours of clothing and spice markets, the chaotic, crowded streets, and the glaring disparity between luxurious hotels and desperate poverty just a stone’s throw away.
“I was turning 80, and was a bit thinking about an exhibition, and I couldn't get inspired,” explains Maggie, whose two previous solo exhibitions, ‘Wine Women and Song’ and ‘Bon Appétit’, were based around trips to Italy and France.
“I'm not a landscape painter, I can paint landscapes, but I thought if I'm going to continue with doing one last solo exhibition, I need inspiration, so somebody suggested I go to India.”
Maggie’s children thought she was mad to be heading off to India at 80, but after putting the idea to her cardiologist, she got the all-clear.
“You never know what's going to happen to you,” says Maggie. “So that's why I went to India; I thought I'd prove a point! It was an experience, and I'm glad I did it.”
Maggie, though, is no stranger to travelling to far-off destinations just for the experience, having once set off for an outback adventure as a young nurse that changed the course of her life.
“I was married to a Lightning Ridge opal miner,” he says. “When I was nursing, two of us decided we’d go to the most ridiculous place that we could think of, and we put a pin in the map of New South Wales and landed on Lightning Ridge.”
Maggie says she has been painting all her life, and in Lightning Ridge, she used to attend “fly-in” art classes with visiting art teachers. But when she retired to Orange, Maggie undertook an Advanced Diploma in visual arts at our local TAFE, learning from artists such as Victor Gordon, Neil Cuthbert and Tim Winters.
“I learnt printmaking, and I taught myself ceramics. I'd done a bit of sculpture work in the past, but I did sculpture… it was a fabulous three years,” recalls Maggie, who graduated at 70 and has been busy making art ever since.
“It's a passion,” she says. “It's not about the sales for me, it's not about the money, it's about my creativity and if somebody can come along and look at my work and enjoy it… that's why I do it, and I love it.”
‘Colour, Chaos and Contradictions’ opens at the Orange Art Society Gallery on Sunday, March 29 at 4pm. The exhibition features more than 20 new acrylic paintings and collagraphs from Maggie Rosso. There will be an official opening at 4pm, Sunday, March 29, with light refreshments and Rosnay wines.
The Orange Art Society Gallery is located in the Cultural Centre at 22 Sale Street, entry via the Woolworths Carpark, opposite Harris Farm.