Stuart Shave | Modern Art is pleased to present American artist and performer Clare E. Rojas with her first solo exhibition in the UK.

San Francisco-based Rojas uses the formal qualities of American folk art to piece together installations including painting and drawing. Gouache painted panels quilt the walls of her installations, framing large-scale paintings depicting women as the protector of a natural world, one that Rojas regards as exploited and undermined.

Rojas' imagery offers an alternative vision, where silent characters are painted into delicately wrought imaginary scenes. Women and their activities are central in Rojas’ whimsical spaces, which are designed as a soothing and empowering counterpoint to our daily interaction with unsympathetic media images. Rojas strongly believes in the powerful healing properties of the natural world and works with what she sees as the purity and truthfulness behind simplified form. Nature is Rojas’ sanctuary and she believes that in its care the world can regain its beauty and strength.

Rojas’ installations are emotional landscapes that explore the social and physical worlds in which we live and by assuming the persona of ‘Peggy Honeywell’, she becomes a singular, consistent character, who pulls together each story. Beneath the depth of Honeywell’s voice is an almost serene feeling of loss that deftly draws out the tales held within her painted installations. Honeywell breathes a life into Rojas’ folkloristic spaces, narrating and elaborating on the rich imagery that covers the gallery walls. Peggy Honeywell will perform within the installation on the night of the opening.

Clare E. Rojas has had seven solo exhibitions in the last three years including The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Deitch Projects, New York and The Knoxville Museum of Art, Tennessee. Under the name of Peggy Honeywell, Rojas is an established recording artist in her own right and has released five albums of original works.