‘Each painting is a world unto itself, with rules laid down just for it, replete with its own questions, its own laws of what is permissible and what is outside the pale. I paint because of this world building capacity to excise the superfluous, to create a complex simplicity. It’s a world where I can find harmony, wholeness, and unity within the mixed bag that is life. A world where disparate beliefs and forks in the road can reflect my contrarian humanity and yet still hold a sense of connectedness and belonging‘.

Caitlyn Rooke is an American artist living in Ireland. She paints with oils on birch wood panels and on stretched linen. Rooke has exhibited with the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in London in 2018 and 2019. She has regularly exhibited work at the Royal Hibernian Academy’s annual exhibitions since 2014. After receiving an invitation to exhibit at the RHA’s 191st Annual, her work received the Whyte’s Award, as well as, the Contemporary Irish Art Society Award. Rooke’s work is in the Office of Public Works State Art Collection of Ireland, as well as in the private collection of Jane Chao Lee, among others.

Since graduating with a BFA in 2010, she has continued new learnings via workshops with artists such as Donald Jurney, Conor Walton, Vincent Desiderio, Bernardo Siciliano, and Aleah Chapin.

Her influences include a wide berth of artists and range anywhere from Antonio Lopez Garcia to Aryz to Paul Henry. Traces of realism, expressionism, and graphic realism appear in her work in unexpected re-imaginings. The result is a distinctive ethereal vision built upon the formal qualities of painting.