“Let It Work If It Works. In Conversation with Rose Wylie” by David Kohn
2026
David Kohn: We’re here in your studio where you’ve been working for almost sixty years. The paintings are all gone and the house is now empty because you have two big shows on. You described the Royal Academy (RA) show as an extraordinary opportunity as the first female painter to be given a show there. I wondered if you could say a little bit about how you conceived of the show?
Rose Wylie: The whole business about being invited to show was terrific. Cornelia Parker understood the historic situation of no woman painter showing there before, and she put it together, she pin-pointed this fact, verbalized it, and she pushed it, and she got it going. I mean, thank you, Cornelia. It was hugely exciting for me, but I want the work to be understood as painting, and for me to be understood as a painter first without being put in a box for being a woman, or being the first. That’s actually neither here nor there. What I want is people to respond, to feel, and to sense quality, or not, in the painting.