It’s not enough that he helped found the storied 9:30 Club in Washington D.C.

Or played with his band, the Urban Verbs, at CBGB in New York.

Or signed a record contract with Warner Brothers after Brian Eno saw them play.

No. Robin Rose was destined for the realm of the visual too.

Educated in the arts at Florida State University in the late 1960s, he’s an interpreter of ancient times, and these times too.

“One of my professors there asked me if I was a painter or a musician,” he says.

The fact is, he’s both – and they’re not mutually exclusive.

“Art people like my music, and music people like my art,” he says.

He’s known for an encaustic painting technique, one that dates back to Pliny the Elder. He’ll stretch linen over a honeycombed aluminum panels, then mix resin and beeswax, heat it and paint while it’s hot.

Ethereal, oscillating and other-worldly, his paintings are designed first to help him grow – spiritually, emotionally and intellectually.

“If can achieve that with my work, then there’ll be some residual effect for others, for their own needs,” he says. “I want people to remain curious, to engage with the aesthetic and the beauty.”

His newest burst of creativity consists of 14 works in acrylic, including diptychs and triptychs, will be display at the Howard Scott Gallery in New York, from April 17 – 24.

“They have a language among themselves,” he says. “They’re like Highway 61 Revisited, or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band or Her Satanic Majesty’s Request – they cross-talk.”

And they have a language all their own – some of it modern, some of it Paleolithic, and much of it intuitive

For more information, go to http://www.robinroseart.com/index.html

[slideshow id=1167]