Artist Profile: Monica Rozak

Monica Rozak fell in love twice, at the same time. “I met my husband here and he showed me all of his favorite back roads, and special beach hideouts and I fell in love with the Cape the same time I fell for him,” the Buffalo, New York native confesses. “His family has been in east Orleans for generations and the had a variety of pieces of property that we managed for them. As we were remodeling a small cottage where we could live, that’s when I started to notice the Cape light.”

That famous light she speaks of illuminates Rozak’s sweeping landscapes with vivid energy that intensifies the experience of a Cape Cod day, despite the time of day or the season. Her delineation of sky and land serves as a bullseye for the view as they feel as though they are standing under her sweeping ceiling of clouds, sun and atmosphere. “I definitely have a love for looking out at a big sky,” she says. “I walk a lot for inspiration and on every walk the sky just holds my attention. And it is different every day and every hour, it is constantly changing, something I don’t think you can say about the sky anywhere else.”

Rozak is fascinated by more than just the clouds sweeping across the sky. Her instinctual understanding of the complexity of the sky is perhaps why her paintings resonate so deeply with her audience. “Just from the nature of what sky is,” she explains, “there is a lot of vapor. It is reflection, it is where the light is carried. It is where the freedom of space exists. And the fog, I just love the fog. It softens everything.” This appreciation for heavy air that sometimes blankets the Cape is evident in her…