Bio
Rose Christian is a visual artist who works in multiple media that include printmaking, painting, and drawing. She stepped away from a 30-year career in biomedical education and research to pursue her art education at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and graduated from Tufts University with an MFA in studio art in 2022. She teaches drawing and printmaking at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and works in her studio in Chelmsford, MA surrounded by woodlands, wetlands and meadows that provide the materials and inspiration for her artwork.
Artist Statement
As a child growing up in a small town, I was free to explore the neighboring thickets and fields until called home for dinner with my pockets full of wonders - a snakeskin, a toad, a jawbone. As a physician-scientist I explored human tissues with microscopes, x-rays, and sound waves to find those subtle shifts in shape, color, and spatiality that signify healing or disease. This practice of close observation has shaped my visual language as an artist. I use drawings, prints, paintings, and installations to map, explore, and connect with the more-than-human world around me. Animacy, kinship, and symbiosis are themes of my quietly detailed work. The lichen and flora that I encounter on walks are my subjects, collaborators, and teachers. Locally foraged plants contribute their pigments for work that celebrates the life forms growing overlooked in our cracked sidewalks, and not in a glamorized wilderness. I believe the act of careful looking can lead to actual caring; my work gives a reason to look more deeply. Curriculum Vitae
Education
Artist Mentorship, Zea Mays Printmaking, Northampton, MA 2023-2025
Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art, School of the Museum of Fine Arts @Tufts, May 2022
Study with artist Karl Stephan, Cambridge, MA 2018-2019
Study with artist Ty Hodanish, Stockbridge, NJ 2015-2018
Endocrinology Fellowship, Mayo Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Rochester, MN 2003
MD, Albany Medical College, Albany, NY 1985
BS, Biology, Marlboro College, Marlboro, VT 1980
Work experience
Studio art instructor, Museum of Fine Art, Boston, MA 2022-2023
Graduate teaching assistant, SMFA@Tufts 2021
Development leader, Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute, Cambridge, MA 2018-2019
Executive director, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Princeton, MA 2012-2018
Associate professor, UVM College of Medicine, Burlington, VT 2005-2011
Assistant professor, UW-Madison College of Medicine, Madison, WI 2003-2005
Clinical Instructor, Mayo Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Rochester, MN 1998-2003
Primary care physician in Bath, ME and Rochester, MN 1987-1996
Gallery assistant, Society of Arts & Crafts, Newbury St., Boston, MA 1977
Gallery assistant, Ward-Nasse Gallery, 178 Prince St., N.Y., N.Y. 1976
Exhibitions
2024
Cove Street Gallery, Portland ME
Concord Art Center, Concord, MA
2023
Concord Art Center, Concord, MA
Thayer Academy, Brockton, MA
Umbrella Center, Concord, MA
100 Newbury Court, Concord, MA
New Hampshire Art Association, Portsmouth, NH
Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA
Copley Society, Boston, MA
2022
You’re on Mute, Graduate Thesis, Aidekman Gallery, Medford, MA
Ecology, Silver Center Gallery, Plymouth, NH
Unseen Biology, Olin College, Needham, MA
2021
SMFA juried exhibit & sale, Anderson Gallery, SMFA, Boston, MA
Bog Flags of the Five Kingdoms, Cranberry Bog Reservation, Chelmsford, MA
2020
Lichen Map Tree Wrap, Cranberry Bog Reservation, Chelmsford, MA
Syntax Variations, Mission Hill Gallery, Boston, MA
SMFA juried exhibit & sale, Anderson Gallery, SMFA, Boston, MA
2018
Prallsville Mills Gallery, Stockbridge, MA
Professional Arts Memberships
The Boston Printmakers
Monotype Guild of New England (MGNE)