Ed Rose’s relationship with art began at a young age under the tutelage of his photojournalist father. Ed began assisting his dad in the darkroom at age four and continued receiving knowledge from his father throughout the lives of both individuals; he was also artistically influenced and encouraged throughout his childhood by his aunt and uncle, both accomplished painters. Rose regularly accompanied his father on assignment, it was during these excursions he saw that photography both portrays a false reality and, simultaneously, a hyper-reality; lost in youthful naiveté, he was unaware that the powerful properties of gestalt contained in the photograph were being embedded into his artistic understandings. It cannot be emphasized enough how his early experiences have affected his artistic understanding, processes, and imagery.
Initially his artistic interests were primarily focused on the photographic. On graduating from photography school, he started his career as a commercial photographer. First free-lancing, Ed then went on to work in the studios of two full-service printers; the final being Blazing Graphics, which serviced an extremely high-end clientele. In 1996, he and a business partner started Native Image Studios (Providence, RI); Native was a high-end photo studio working on primarily national accounts. Two years later the studio incorporated color correction into the services offered and then design services. In 2005, Ed and his business partner parted ways and Ed Rose Studio was formed and serviced the same clientele as the previous iteration.
While at Blazing Graphics, Ed began to experiment with the combining of paintings and drawings with photographic images in-camera, employing multiple exposures. He developed a process to meld a photographic image with an image of the same subject matter rendered with other media; the result being an image that had the qualities of both a photo and a drawing and/or painting. Aspects of this previous work, and ideas explored in this work, appear throughout Ed’s paintings and drawings. His paintings embrace the false/hyper reality, sense of light, and the thought to placement found in photographs.
In 1997 Rose had his first show of photographs, at Native Gallery, a gallery associated with Native Image. The gallery was a non-profit venture that offered gallery space to local artists; it was the largest gallery space in Rhode Island with over 20,000 sq. ft. While teaching at Providence Country Day School, he participated in two faculty shows in 2011 and 2012.
Ed has taught as an adjunct faculty for the Communications Dept. at Rhode Island College, at Providence Country Day School (East Providence, RI), and currently teaches at CharihoTECH (Richmond, RI). Subjects Ed has taught and currently teaches include Color Reproduction, Photo Reproduction, Computer Illustration, Design, Drawing, Graphic Design, Advertising Design, and Print Technologies.; he has also provided industry retraining for displaced workers.
Ed is the recipient of a BFA with a concentration in painting from Rhode Island College.