Rosemary “Romey” Stuckart (1955–2020), like most Westerners, enjoyed access to natural spaces. Born in Oregon and schooled at Gonzaga University in Spokane and the University of Iowa, she moved to northern Idaho in 1987. There, she began to make paintings of the forest in the Cabinet Mountains wilderness adjacent to the towns of Hope and Sandpoint. In 1992, she was awarded both the Guggenheim Fellowship and Idaho Commission for the Arts State Fellowship, followed quickly by a National Endowment of the Arts visual artist fellowship in 1993. This level of support provoked a shift in her work that reflected her interest in the energy underlying the natural world. Stuckart meditated on this shift, noting, “The paintings recognize the nature of reality as participatory; individual perception reflecting not an objective truth but an inner reality.”

Stuckart sought to embody the underlying energy and potential of a place or thing rather than recording their outward appearance. She explained: “There is more of a marriage between concept and method—the process of painting mimicking rather than describing the process of nature (life) as energy, change, movement, and transformation revealing an inherent underlying interconnectedness.”

The work bridges the divide between abstraction and representation, reflecting what Curator of Exhibitions at the Salt Lake Art Center Jim Edwards said in 2003, that it was “suggesting natural processes in states of transformation.”

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog with an essay by Ben Mitchell. Catalog support comes from A.R.T. and Hope Circle, LLC. Romey passed away while this exhibition was being planned, and MAM is proud to honor her memory.