au dela: works by April Roush
FREE | 5-7P | ALL AGES
accompanied by music on vinyl curated by the artist
Let go of language, let go of limits- what remains? Silence, melody, touch, pattern, a vast sky, or a memory of a scent, perhaps. If we are fortunate, we see alignment, feel the deepest embrace, hear an answered call. Co-mingled colors challenge us to meet them- toe and nose to composition without language. In each “au dela” canvas, April expresses the edge between beauty revered and beauty endangered. As embodied by the piece “While Thomas Boldly Burns” (36" X 36" framed), there is structure in our violence while conversely the openness of the sky accommodates. Can we learn from this wide and compassionate space? “Au dela” (french for ‘beyond”)- when going beyond what the eye can see, much is revealed, some is left behind, and often clarity arrives. When “beyond”, there is no time or place, instead the ancient truths stand with open arms to hold us all. Saturated acrylic colors worked by palette knife, by hand, or even dripped and dried are layered up to pin down the process of building and breaking occurring everywhere, every day, for all time.
Art asks us to never doubt love, never forget truth, never surrender justice, never separate from possibility. Au dela asks us to be comfortable with the risks in order to save the beauty.
“Always. Always. Always- Be the Love in the Room”- A Roush
ABOUT APRIL ROUSH:
At age 10 April imagined becoming a horse wrangler or sitting as a Supreme Court Justice, and once was bestowed a Tibetan Monk's business card at the Great Wall of China. All three of those are true. All along like most of us, she's been doing mostly the things she should, and occasionally things that shall remain unnamed, but ultimately she found herself one cold winter weekend detailing a freehand painting meditatively and the next and next and upon asking an established artist's guidance the directive given was, "buy bigger canvases and let your mind go out you". Little did she know the palette knife and paint drying on her hands would help her through a crushing family loss, and next a pandemic, a lifeline to focus and wonder.
Working primarily in acrylics, April's intuition brings saturated color forward as a feast non-sad-beige, questioning how love as a constant valiantly contests the threat of passionless living, countering society's cling to neutrals and lines- as if safe rather than the trap they actually are. Themes include the battle between damage and benevolence, using nods toward surrealism.
April resides in Cincinnati with some furry friends and her two inspiring children, who've become adults now, in wonderful ways for which she takes partial credit. She spends time helping where she can on special education, social issues, and community organizing. Despite opposition, she keeps imagining ways to make and leave the world a better place.
