P J Rogers

(Rochester, New York, 1937 - 2014, Akron, Ohio)

North America, American

P. J. Rogers received a BA from Wells College, Aurora, New York in 1954, where she studied under the painter and printmaker Victor Hammer. Rogers also studied with the sculptor Laszlo Szabo at the University of Buffalo and had private lessons with the painter Robert Brackman from the Art Students League in New York. Upon moving to Akron with her husband in the early 1960s, Rogers painted commissioned portraits and studio still lifes until a visit to an exhibition of Japanese aquatints at the Canton Museum of Art transformed her artistic practice. The artist recalls experimenting with aquatinting throughout the1970s, refining her process until it resembled a dance. Rogers’ aquatints often took the form of stylized botanicals. The artist restricted herself to four shades, from soft white to jet black, flattening the forms or representations of plants while simultaneously depicting rhythm and movement.

Rogers’s aquatints have won numerous awards, including the Cleveland Museum of Art May Show award for graphics in 1976 and Ohio Arts Council fellowships in 1979 and 1986. In 1988 Rogers developed an allergy to the harsh chemical solvents used in producing aquatints and turned to photography, using Photoshop to create the rich velvety blacks that had so attracted her to aquatint. Her current photography series, Botanicals, depicts plants in highly artificial environments. Rogers scans the flowers so that they appear to be suspended in a void, the black background contrasting markedly with the bright, flat color of the flowers.

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