As a child growing up in Eastern Europe, Eunika Rogers’ parents took her on road trips to visit castles and churches in the region. Raised as an atheist, she, nevertheless, felt a sense of awe when she entered a Gothic cathedral. At the age of 12, her family fled the former Czechoslovakia for the former Yugoslavia before immigrating to Canada. She studied graphic design and ceramics at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi, where she received a bachelor’s degree, and received her master’s degree in ceramics at the University of Memphis in Tennessee.
Something Heavens, natural foraged clay on canvas, 48 x 36 in.
Rogers later moved to Telluride, Colorodo, where she lives and works today. You might expect that she is a ceramic artist, but she paints…with clay. In graduate school she was working with red clay which she had dug herself, and noticed it was staining her clothes. She experimented with applying the red clay to raw canvas and developed a technique she calls “terroir painting.” Terroir is the perfect word for her landscape and aspen paintings coming from the French word terre meaning earth. In wine making, terroir refers to the multiple things that give wine grapes their flavor, such as soil, climate and sunlight. Today, she also paints with wine, flowers and mushrooms.
The Origin of Belief, natural foraged clay on canvas, 24 x36 in.
Her best-known paintings are those of aspens which she discovered after her move to Telluride. When she first entered an aspen grove, she had the same sense of awe she experienced in the Gothic cathedrals of Europe.
She describes the trees as “these tall, white, majestic columns you find in a Gothic church. And of course, the yellow leaves. Once you get the sunlight through them, they’re very reminiscent of illuminated windows in the cathedrals, just illuminating the space of the white columns. I’m actually painting them with the materials they grow in.
Silent Confluence, natural foraged clay on canvas, 24 x 36 in.
“What I like about collecting clays, the natural pigments, is just the idea that it connects me closer to nature, to these trees, to this landscape, to this country. I like the fact that people are seeing them and hoping that they’re actually connected to the earth the same way I am.”
Leah Garcia, marketing director at Blue Rain Gallery in Santa Fe, comments, “For collectors, her work offers something rare—a tangible connection to place and process, in which the story of the landscape is embedded directly in the painting’s surface, making each piece both visually compelling and enduring.”
Calling, natural foraged clay on canvas, 12 x 12 in.
Eunika Rogers: New Terroir Paintings will be shown at Blue Rain Gallery’s Santa Fe location from March 27 through April 9. A reception will be held on opening day from 5 to 7 p.m.
Blue Rain Gallery 544 S. Guadalupe Street • Santa Fe, NM 87501 • (505) 954-9902 • www.blueraingallery.com
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