Eunika Rogers

You might pass her on your hikes crouched near a creek with a small shovel and a plastic bag or find her parked on the side of the road in a ditch collecting her clay - 'paint' that she uses in her clay paintings.

Eunika collects clay and natural pigments that she dilutes in water and uses on both canvas and watercolor paper. She gets to name her paint; often the name carries a hint of a peak or a hike she did.  She has an earthy palette; different shades of siennas, ochres and umbers from Tennessee, Mississippi, San Francisco, Italy, Slovakia as well as her current home in Colorado. Shades of Columbine and San Juan dusk both shades of umber were collected along St. Miguel River. Her collection of Colorado ochres; Sneezeweed Gold and Crimson Pass was collected from Red Mountain Pass. There is also White Yankee Girl, Black Bear Pass, Sky Over San Miguel that were collected from the San Juan Mountain.

Eunika’s work is a visual dialogue between landscape and the female body. She connects with her subject directly through her hikes and peak exploration. As an ultra distance runner and a former Orienteering Champion she feels very comfortable on or off a trail. Maps and contour lines are part of her backpack items as well as part of her painting process. Her hiking is not only limited to her now hometown of Telluride and the area. She is very familiar with Southeastern landscape where she used to live and of course Slovakia where she was born and raised. She is an experienced trekking guide in High Tatra Mountains.

Prior to living in USA she spent her teenage years in Canada and growing up years in former Czechoslovakia, where she was born and visits often. She was 13 when her family escaped then Communist regime.

She came to USA - Mississippi on a full tennis scholarship and after completing her Fine Arts Master Degree she decided to stay in Mid-South. She is married to her husband Scott, an accomplished adventurer and outdoorsman.

Artist Statement

My work is rooted in nature and the female body. I search for ways to explore how each changes with time, often focusing on a spiritual and physical connection with the land. I use nature as my inspiration for both; the medium and the process – I paint with clay. 

As time passes by, images in the landscape gradually change. This change uncovers layers, stripping it one at a time until one if left with pure emotion. I record a fraction of these images in my photographs, capturing a moment in time, and then using clay and other organic matter, I 'fossilize' these images in my paintings.

The Earth takes all living things, I resurrect them in my paintings, using clay and pigments from the Earth, in their raw, unfiltered form. It is a primitive process, and a primitive medium, one that was used by a primitive man in cave paintings of Altimira or Lascaux. To paint with clay is to deposit it, layer by layer on the painting surface. Time changes things but my paintings stay constant.