BEVERLY, MA.- George Rosa, an emerging Boston-based artist, will create a site-specific installation in Montserrat’s 301 Gallery that will include large-scale wall murals and paintings on board. His graphic style blends commercial & street aesthetics using found scraps of paper, stencils, and bright, expressive strokes of paint. His mixed-media collages are sealed with a layer of resin, to add a smooth, shiny finish to the rough-edged, gritty forms.

“All the work pertains to the same thing; it’s my take on beauty,” says Rosa. “I’m more attracted to grime and things that people tend not to notice while in a city and I try to re-create those aesthetics in my work.”

Rosa’s background in graphic design and his keen sense of formal composition transforms his disparate inspirations into cogent, intelligent, and captivating works of art. The imagery he uses includes, but is not limited to, stylized sheep, vintage pin-up girls, soldiers in gas masks, and bold numerals. “A lot of my imagery is about power and control. I think the guns and war imagery is about the idea of controlling people, manipulation and power.”

Rosa is a graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, where he was a recipient of a Merit Scholarship. At 26, Rosa has exhibited nationally, including the Radici Gallery in New Orleans, the Gomi Gallery in Austin, Texas, and in the Bomit 40 oz. Traveling Show, which traveled to Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Calgary. He has also exhibited in Boston galleries such as Judi Rotenberg, the Bernard Toale Gallery, and Rhys Gallery.

“I’m trying to bring the gallery aesthetic to the streets and vice versa. My work is about finding a balance or a medium between graffiti and fine art. It doesn’t look like most of the work you would see in galleries, but I feel that at this point with graffiti and street art, there is a whole new art form being born.”