Katha Rossein

I have spent my life creating safe spaces for patients to reveal themselves...In turn, painting has given me that safe space to reveal myself

The body is my medium-I see/feel/know the body as something that gives me inspiration. As a physician and artist it is the language with which I am most comfortable. Studying Fine Arts at NYU during the late 1960's was a time fraught with political movements both from the anti war movement to civil rights to the women's movement and my training as both a painter and printmaker quickly combined using figurative expression to speak to the politics of the times. 

I then went on to complete my medical degree at New York Medical College and for forty years I cared for and nurtured others to achieve their body's best. The concentration in my artwork shifted from political to personal, from individual to universal - the new conversation embraced the hard questions of loss, turbulence and suffering as well as triumphs and change. Painting the figure had evolved from a deeper appreciation of the hidden, the emerging and finally the spoken sensuality of all bodies. Medicine and art continue for me to be intimately connected as the body speaks sometimes directly and sometimes-through innuendo but always revealing an inner joy. Ironically the politics of the current times are once again calling to me and I find my art trying to grapple once again with racism, feminism, global climate change and a worldwide health and human crisis. My art continues to be my visceral voice- the organic expression of all that compels me.