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The Oxford University Press Handbook on the History of Psychology, cover design Practical Pointers, Seth Rosenberg, o/c, 2008

Art retrospectives - even partial ones - are sometimes presaged by tragedy. That's true in the case of Seth Rosenberg, a longtime Washington painter, framer and gallery owner whose untimely death, from a heart attack, in 2009 has precipitated an affectionate, if rueful, look at the work he created in the last few years of his life.

Seth Rosenberg was born in Connecticut in 1951 and lived for many years with his wife Jane in Washington DC and later with their son Eli. For many years they ran the very cool and hip Gallery, DC Fine Arts in Georgetown.

An artist gives up control over how an artwork is interpreted when he or she sends it out into the world. Some imaginary based on mythology, popular culture or widely known symbols is universal. Other images can be highly personal or have autobiographical meanings. How is a viewer to know the difference? Does it matter? The paintings of late Cleveland artist Seth Rosenberg raise these questions with special intensity.

Seth Rosenberg was an artist well acquainted with his inner bureaucrat. He painted as if he were an official in a ministry of 20th-century visual experience who gathered, sorted and classified visual fragments from the world around him and then recombined them in compositions organized according to inscrutable and magical rules of visual logic and humor.

Big changes are about to sweep through the arts scene in Cleveland. The point is that they haven't happened yet.The fall art season in Cleveland, which unofficially begins right around now, might be considered a prelude to the transformation. It won't be dull by any means. But it may look relatively sedate in retrospect, considering the excitement to come in the near future.

Seth Rosenberg's The Annunciation feels overwhelming at first, but the more you dissect the layers and patterns, the more you understand the world as he saw it.

One morning a dozen years ago, Seth Rosenberg opened up his Georgetown frame shop and gallery and happened to notice a mysterious vine growing in a planter box near the front door — growing almost before his eyes. He began watering the plant every day, and after two months, it was 24 feet long and still growing.

by Dan Tranberg, Special to the Plain DealerSunday August 23, 2009, 12:03 AM
Artist Seth Rosenberg, shown here in his painting studio in downtown Cleveland, relocated to Northeast Ohio from Washington, D.C., in 2005. He is one of 20 winners of a $20,000 Creative Workforce Fellowship from the Cleveland Partnership for Arts and Culture.
Originally from Connecticut, artist Seth Rosenberg...