Original artwork description:

Rose Madder, 65 x 81 cm, collage and acrylic on canvas, 2024

Rose Madder is part of a series of paintings dedicated to heroines in literature. The principle is simple: after reading the book, I create a painting related to the female character, using its pages.

Rose Madder is a book written by Stephen King and published in 1995. It tells the story of Rosie, who stayed with her violent husband Norman for 14 years, and decides one morning to leave home. After stealing her partner's credit card, she takes a bus that drops her off hundreds of kilometers away. In her new city, she rebuilds her life and comes across an intriguing painting in an antique shop: a young woman is depicted from behind, in a landscape reminiscent of ancient Greece. As Norman tracks her down, the elements of the painting seem to change and Rosie ends up entering the painting and meeting the mysterious Rose Madder...
The title of the book, which is ultimately the name of the character in the painting, can be translated into French in two ways: "crazier" Rose, or "Rose garance", which is a color close to red. I managed to find in acrylic the shade that corresponds to madder: alizarin carmine. Rosie and Rose are therefore adorned with "Madder". In my painting, we find the important elements of the story: the painting bought by Rosie, which is a sort of distorting mirror of her personality and her life, the labyrinth she walks through and in which she confronts a bull (I used a plan of the Palace of Knossos, whose maze of corridors inspired the myth of the labyrinth) and the gold bracelet that Rosie offers to Rose.

Support: repentance (cotton canvas / old painting covered)
Paper: Rose Madder, by Stephen King

The canvas is varnished and equipped with a hanging system.

Materials used:

Book pages and acrylic on canvas

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