To ensure these qualities came through, original paintings and prints were lent to the design team for close study. “The works were gorgeous, there was such evidence of the artist’s hand,” recalls Natalie Horvath, co-director of design at Schumacher. Concepts were mocked up and brought into computer software, then digitally manipulated to perfection with input from Rojas. “She directed us to adjust the scale and exact relation of color she wanted,” Benson says. Meanwhile, Schumacher advised on the best canvas and printing techniques to replicate Rojas’s unique style.
The vertically- oriented Bleeding Hearts pattern, for example, is based on a lovely floral motif from an existing aquatint etching and derives its delicate silhouette and nuanced tonal gradients from an engraving process that pulls fine detail from the plate. Made using a similar method, Forget Me Dots—reminiscent of a classic Swiss dot—is inspired by the artist’s whimsical moon motifs merged with botanical embellishments, a blend of celestial and earthly charm. Or take the mural-like Flying West, a tribute to Rojas’s affinity for birds, which sets stylized black cranes—their sensuous wings tapered to impossibly knife-edged tips—against a horizon line of neutral stripe. In Confetti, originally a gouache work, the riotous arrangement of broken, multicolor stripes cascades vertically in a nod to falling water.
