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My name is Rosemarie Forsythe. I’m a painter 
and I live in Great Falls, Virginia.  

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My main inspiration comes from illuminated 
manuscripts of the 15th century,  

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and I tend to use a lot of math and 
physics and science in my painting.

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My interest in art is lifelong. And during my 
careers as a diplomat and a business executive,  

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wherever I went, I always went to museums.  

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I always met with artists. I collected artists. 
So I immersed myself in it. But I didn’t.

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I didn’t have the time. Every job I’ve ever had 
has been one of those 24, seven kind of jobs.  

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And I would use art to relax.  

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one of the first time I ever saw an illuminated 
manuscript interestingly was in Armenia.

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It was at the Matenadaran Manuscript Library 
and at the time, this was decades and decades ago.  

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And the man who showed me these illuminated 
manuscripts was Levon Ter-Petrosyan,  

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who eventually he wasn’t then, but much later  

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he became the president of 
Armenia and I was posted there.

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I was the first kind of permanent US diplomat 
posted that is not a temporary duty person,  

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and Ter-Petrosyan had this. Just his scholarly 
background was all about these illuminated

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manuscripts. And so there was a kind of 
connection between my diplomatic career  

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and my career later as an artist.

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In fact, I think I probably wouldn’t be the kind 
of artist I am if I had had these experiences.  

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My art is all about ideas and whether there is 
science with math or or maybe a set of symbols.

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A lot of my work is about  

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women, sort of women scientists and I have an 
ongoing series. I call it my Wise Woman series, and I  

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love researching the work that these women did and 
also highlighting their struggle to be recognized.

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You think of all the science and accomplishments 
that must have been lost because they couldn’t  

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even get into university or graduate school or get 
jobs. And I like highlighting these women because  

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even after all that, well, as difficult 
as it was for them to move through,  

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they had this incredible love of 
science and they persevered in that

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way, so their accomplishments 
are even more incredible.  

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My style, I suppose, are illuminated manuscripts 
because I love that combination of matte color and  

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gold. It just is so beautiful to me, and I think 
that kind of art just really always moved me.

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I would look at it and think, Wow, what,
what magic? And instead of, you know,  

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the 15th century, they were mostly religious 
paintings because the church had the money for  

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these expensive paints and pigments. 
But my modern take on it is to use  

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math and science as sort of a very 
contemporary take on this beautiful sort of

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style. And I just really loved making them.  

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I did a lot of research into what 
gives you joy when I retired.  

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I followed that and it led me to a 
career in painting and now it took me  

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a year or two to really figure out how I wanted 
to do it and what would make my work distinctive

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. But I wanted to do something deep 
and intellectual like me. But also,  

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you know, I wanted to create works of 
art, and I didn’t want to just create  

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any kind of work of art. I wanted to do something 
very distinctive and inspired by my life.

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This very rich life abroad, and it took a 
long time once I decided what I wanted to do  

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because I had painting full time events and 
working in these more than full time jobs. So I it  

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took me a year to kind of develop that look, and 
I have an idea, and then I go into the research

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phase. I keep track with my process and my 
ideas with notebooks. And then I develop them.  

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So I spend a lot of time and research on that. 
Sometimes on some of the physics equations  

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it can take months until I really, really 
understand something well enough to paint it.

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And then I decide on the symbols, and I have 
about probably 30 books on symbols, and I spend  

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a lot of time figuring out 
what would be appropriate.  

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Then the next step is to move towards 
the actual kind of painting framework.

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I choose the size of the canvas. I choose 
three to five colors. And once I have this  

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framework, then the rest of it is pretty 
intuitive. I do everything in layers. I put  

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them on the strips of paper so I can hold it up to 
a painting and see whether I think they’ll work.

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And a lot of times it’s layered 
in with gold, and that’s  

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that’s what gives my paintings this sort of three 
dimensional look, and it’s how I weave in the  

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gold. I try out how the 
layers look with each other.

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It’ll start with just one layer of 
paint doesn’t look that great. And then  

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I would say after there 
are three different colors,  

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I kind of layer on top of each other and 
then I put the little gold rivets on them.

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That’s when they they really 
begin to come to light.  

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It’s pretty thrilling for me, actually. 
I spent eleven years as a U.S. diplomat  

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foreign service officer, and I in fact 
use some of my declassified cables  

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from the end of the Soviet Union in some of my 
art, and I like the idea of coming full circle.

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I started as a diplomat and then did other 
things. I worked in international business,  

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and now I’ve kind of come back 
to do diplomacy in a new way  

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The two works I have going to Amman. one is 
the 17 equations that changed the world  

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is probably my favorite equation painting, 
and the other painting is called Rise, and

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it has a lot of symbols of resilience, renewal  

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and transformation. And they both I think they 
were both chosen together because they had  

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trees in them, which for me is a wonderful symbol 
of unity in some ways . So when I do the equations,  

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I like to use these interlocking wave 
patterns in the tops of the trees because

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to me, it shows how the equations are 
related to each other and they work  

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together to sort of serve as the basis 
of our modern world. There are probably  

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25 symbols of renewal and transformation in it. 
You have everything from the ouroboros,  

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which is the symbol of self-renewal 
and I etched into the trunks.

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These Celtic symbols for renewal, and others like roosters. And one of my favorites and the painting is filled with it  

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are eggs. And because I spent a lot of time as 
a Russian specialist, they are Faberge eggs  

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and I had such a great time looking at 
Faberge eggs and looking at patterns and  

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using gold leaf to make them.

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So I really am so excited to have 
those two paintings on view together.