Clare Rojas is painter, filmmaker, performance artist, and musician.  Her fairy tale-like, gouache-on-panel paintings initially look uncomplicated with their flat colors and child-like drawing style, yet they evolve from complex and multiple sources.  The paintings, containing maidens and anthropomorphized animals, simplified figures and stylized landscapes, visually reference classic European fables and fairy tales, and popular and folk culture.  Yet Rojas provides us with no specific literary references or identifiable sources and each figure—often alone in an odd and eerie landscape—seems to emerge from its own web of mystery and intrigue.  Without a clear linear narrative, the paintings suggest the fragmented nature of dream states coupled with a contemporary mythology derived from psychological states of mind, history, story telling, and the artist’s imagination.  Many of the works are untitled, compelling the viewer to create a narrative to underline the visual “story” of the painting.  For instance in Untitled, 2002, a woman seated on a tree branch has just sawed herself free of the tree, appearing to freefall into space while “riding” her newly cut log.  Her rupture from the body of the tree is echoed in the painting by a split curtain that seems to come apart behind her.  Because there is no narrative title to guide us, we may freely associate our own experiences and graft them to the painting, precisely what Rojas expects us to do. Rojas performs under the name Peggy Honeywell and has organized exhibition happenings with a performative component. For instance, she curated a one-night exhibition in Philadelphia in which 15 artists exhibited and then ate their own art. 
 
Clare Rojas was born in Columbus, OH, and received her M.F.A. from School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL, and her B.F.A. from Rhode Island School of Design, Providence.  She has exhibited her work at Deitch Projects and White Columns, New York, NY; Lizabeth Oliveria Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA, among others.  She is the first recipient of the Headlands Center for the Arts Tournesol Award, and in 2003 she received the prestigious Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award.   This is her first major solo museum exhibition.