artitudes

Carma Murphy Rogers

Thanksgiving Flowers
oil on canvas

Carma Rogers was a visual artist; a painter who had Schizophrenia. She was a prominent figure both in her home community of the West End as well as the Greater Vancouver mental health community. She was artist in residence at Coast Foundation’s Mental Health Drop-in where she led art classes, always encouraging consumers like herself to use art as a form of self expression.

Carma educated the community about living with Schizophrenia. She was active with the BC Schizophrenia Society as well as Vancouver’s Coast Foundation and often spoke publicly of her experiences in an effort to dispel common stereotypes and stigma attached to mental illness. Tragically, Carma died suddenly in March 2000. She is greatly missed.

I try to explore the fragility of life through the use of vivid colours, I use texture to draw the viewer into the painting. I will often outline subjects with a fragile identifying line, to contrast the bold colour and thick, often impasto like texture in order to make a distinction between the raw lucidity of nature and the order of city life. The physical simplicity of a person’s features compared to the complexity of relationships.

I seek to define my relationship with nature, to express my interaction with the world around me. My focus has been the Canadian landscape, and often my immediate environment in Vancouver.

Tanya Steinhausen