The other men working on the sign are from all walks of life. There is a Native American, next to a Frenchmen, next to a Korean. They are amazing artists, and they all have their own stories. Even though they paint the same pictures on billboards all across town, each lends his particular style to the identical images—and Rosa can tell by the shading and use of color who has done what. This, the technical aspects of their painting, is how they express themselves. Red paint has dripped down Alex’s pants and the smiling woman’s lips he has fashioned on the billboard have required much attention. Below him, LA bustles--people and cars dart into and away from one another—and the sun begins to set on another day. Alex runs the brush down those long curling lips one more time and calls it quits.
A lifelong passion for painting has put him there, forming a pair of perfectly pouting lips one hundred feet in the air. A graduate from the California Institute of the Arts, Rosa began painting while he was in the Air Force. Stationed in the South Seas at a research station, Rosa started painting during his time off to quell the boredom. When he returned to LA he began working for Foster and Kaiser, one of the largest billboard companies in the world. From there, the rest is history.
Since those days, Rosa’s story has taken some interesting turns. For one, he came to Las Cruces (His wife Barbara Rosa’s hometown) to retire. But when he got here, he found he couldn’t put down his paintbrushes. Since he was already comfortable painting large pieces, it was a natural step for him to try his hand at murals. Now, his murals of Italian street scenes don the walls Lorenzo’s Avanti. Brightly lit and colorful, the work expresses the fullness of life found on a simple street corner or café. Numerous other public locations exhibit his work. One, in an old Coca-Cola building, stands fifteen feet high and twenty wide, mimicking a postcard from the 1920s. In it, a woman sips from a Coke while reclining on the beach. Around her is life, the way it was back then.
Since Rosa is technically retired, he is allowed to pursue projects that interest him without making concessions. Often, Rosa’s work exhibits his interest in “painting into the past” as he calls. By doing research to uncover the types of clothing people wore, the food that they ate, and what they lived in, Rosa often attempts to present a slice of life from a time past. The beach scene is a perfect example of this. When one sees it, he not only admires the beauty and magnitude of the work, but also the glimpse into past ways of living that it offers.
But Rosa work is not only for public spaces. His work dots many area residences, from patio murals, to interior full ceiling-scapes. Currently, Rosa is at work on a mural at the residence of Mrs. Griffing. The painting incorporates three walls of an inner patio and illustrates the history the Mesilla Valley while depicting the scenic view of the Organ Mountains. The rest of the painting shows Juan de Oñate and other historical figures making their way through the valley.
At the residence of Oscar and Lilly Andrade, Rosa spent five months painting the ceiling in their media room. “I tried to lift the ceiling,” he says. “I wanted to give it a sense of floating.” The mural is a series of clouds during a sunset. Flocks of parrots are flying towards the horizon, and as one approaches the setting sun, the clouds get lighter. Each individual cloud, Rosa points out, has its own unique personality. Light fades with distance and the mural itself quite accurately captures the depth and structure of the scene. “I respect my audience,” Rosa says referring to the way that he fashions his paintings to include even the most specific details. “I don’t want to cheat them.”
A simple painting of the Laguna pueblo with a storm on the horizon graces his bedroom wall. Here, in his own home, Rosa has captured the expansive New Mexico landscape—complete with a lazy truck or two, ominous clouds, and that ever-present brightness. But this painting also represents Rosa’s future as a muralist. The landscape scene was done in what he calls “the big picture” technique. The evolution of a mural usually starts with him analyzing the site, then doing some sketches, and then painting it directly onto the surface of the wall or ceiling. However, with the “the big picture” technique, Rosa paints a smaller version of the mural on canvas, then, using a high-quality printer, he makes a print of the painting, which he fastens to the wall itself. The painting is then touched up and sanded—thus preserving the mural feel, with the high quality of canvas paintings. Further, with this technique, Rosa can do most of the work in his own studio, cutting down the three to five weeks it would normally take him to a number of hours.
The murals are more than a visually pleasing accoutrement to a room. Rosa’s artistic eye often captures the life in the natural world around us, making it vibrant. There is a certain silence to his work—a tribute to the elements of beauty in every passing moment. In turn, this can transform a space by removing the walls around it. The murals turn a once static wall into a mesa and the Organ Mountains. Ceilings become a cloudy sky at the end of a day. A wall becomes a window into the past, the present, and each mindful brushstroke ends up shaping something of lasting merit.
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