At a gourmet chocolate shop in Palo Alto, a retired professor from San José State presents her paintings to show her love for the natural landscapes visited during childhood.
Rosemary Henze, a retired linguistic and language development professor from SJSU, said her friend invited her to have her art show at his chocolate shop.
“I just figured this is a good way to sort of see if I like exhibiting my work,” Henze said.
On each of the deep red walls of Alegio Chocolaté, oil paintings of the Sierra Nevadas and other scenic locations throughout California are hung above small boxes of chocolate.
In each of the canvases, smooth paint strokes recreate the images of natural scenery ranging from desert rocks to various trees that can be seen throughout the state.
Henze said she travels to different locations, she takes multiple photographs as reference.
She said when she sketches her artwork she combines all of her photo references together.
“I combine all of the photographs and the sketches into something completely new,” she said.
Henze said every scenery she painted on each canvas has a lot of meaning for her because she grew up visiting each of those locations throughout her childhood.
She said many of these locations have lots of memories and stories with family and friends.
“There's certain lakes and mountains that I’ve known since childhood so they have lots of meaning and lots of stories, family stories,” she said. “When I'm painting there, I feel like I'm sort of recapitulating a lot of narratives and history.”
Henze said in her largest painting in the chocolate shop, she painted the center of Chocolate Peak, a mountain peak located in the Eastern Sierras.
She said she grew up camping in front of the lake painted at the bottom of the painting.
Henze said she has also brought her nieces and nephews to the same area to camp there until they grew up and started bringing their own children to those camping areas as well.
“It's like another generation of little kids that have gone camping there with me,” Henze said. “It has this intergenerational feel to it.”
Covrina Grieco, Henze’s step-daughter, said she and her family have been traveling to many of these locations around twice a year for the past eight years.
Grieco said she feels very fortunate to be a part of Henze’s family and to visit the Eastern Sierras.
“I know those mountains, I know which lake that is just from looking at it,” she said. “So it is a very personal experience.”
Grieco said she’s been watching Henze paint since she was nine-year-old.
She said she used to watch Henze sketch and paint with mostly watercolor whenever she was out in nature.
“Any trips that we took, she would be sketching in a little watercolor pad with a travel watercolor kit,” Grieco said.
She said watching Henze transition into painting with oils instead of watercolor has been a journey.
Henze also said both mediums are very different in comparison to one another because oil paints take a long time to dry and are easy to smudge.
“I think it's a great skill that she's giving herself the time to move into,” Grieco said. “I think oil paint is totally scary . . . It's a really intimidating medium.”
Henze said she used to make small watercolor paintings in her sketchbooks while she was out hiking.
She said she switched to painting with oil paints in 2018 after retiring from SJSU.
“I decided that now that I'm retired, I really want to expand my practice of art,” Henze said.
Henze said to expand her painting skills, she took a class at Berkeley with Afsaneh Michaels.
Michaels is an art teacher and a private coach who has been teaching students how to make art for 25 years, according to her website.
Henze said Michaels first taught her how to paint with acrylics and eventually taught her how to paint with oil paints.
She also said after some time Michaels taught her how to paint on larger canvases.
“After some experimentation, her art became about recording and connecting with places and the memories associated with these places in her past that were formative and meaningful to her,” Michaels said. “It’s as though these places in the landscape spoke to her through the rocks, the earth, the plants and flowers and the water and reminded her of who she is.”
