CABIN 

Places of Refuge, 2026

“There is something deeply human about the idea of a cabin — a modest structure assembled from whatever is available off the land, offering warmth and refuge against the elements. Neither permanent nor grand, these humble shelters become expressions of resourcefulness, individuality, and the universal desire for a place to call home.” — RR

Roth is drawn to the humble, improvised nature of these small structures, exploring the cabin as both an architectural form and a metaphor for home. Provisional shelters built from necessity, resourcefulness, and materials at hand, each possesses its own distinct personality — a collision of individual expression, circumstance, and environment. What interests Roth is the remarkable individuality found within these utilitarian structures, each becoming a small echo of place. These winter nomads feel hunkered in. Roth builds each composition through recollection, research, abstraction, and emotion. Beginning with a feeling of home, each painting evolves spontaneously, taking on its own character and narrative through an intuitive process of construction. Using painted papers, layered pigment, abrasion, fragmented surfaces, and recycled materials, collage becomes Roth’s medium of choice. He constructs each work with geometric simplicity and restraint, allowing the cabin to emerge gradually through overlapping rectangles, painted fragments, and found letters and words. These elements suggest the familiar geometry of a cabin — a roofline, a window, a doorway, a chimney and its slow fire — while remaining deliberately open-ended. Abstracted angles, graphic forms, and fragments of text move between recognition and abstraction, allowing material, process, and recollection to shape and interrupt the structure. Built from memory, research, imagination, and emotion, each cabin suggests a place with its own history, character, and story. Set against the suggestion of a winter’s breath, these modest buildings become something more than shelter. They are beacons of warmth and refuge, places of safety and human presence within an expansive and often unforgiving environment. Through their irregular forms and layered surfaces, the collages evoke a deeper emotional sense of home — one rooted in family, community, belonging, and connection. For Roth, each cabin is a metaphor for humanity, an act of emotional construction: a gathering of fragments that, together, create a sense of shelter, place, and warmth.