Rose Roque was born in Quezon City, Philippines in 1988. She immigrated with her family to Los Angeles in 1999 and became a U.S. citizen more than a decade later.

 

She interned for the Office of the Mayor of Los Angeles in 2005 and later worked on several political campaigns. She trained in Culinary Arts and earned a degree in Political Science with a concentration in International Affairs from the University of California, Riverside. She also studied photography under Los Angeles-based photographer Peter Holzhauer.

 

Following the passing of her mother in January 2012, Rose continued working in real estate in Los Angeles to support her two younger sisters. After relocating to the Bay Area, she became a California-licensed real estate sales agent.

 

In September 2023, Rose became a member of San Francisco Women Artists, a historic arts organization whose annual exhibition gave Frida Kahlo her first public showing in 1932. Rose and her daughter, Alexa, later exhibited their paintings together at the SFWA Gallery.

 

Rose is an artist and poet whose multidisciplinary practice spans painting, photography, sculpture, floristry, pottery, and verse. Rather than working toward a singular visual signature, her work is unified by a sustained attention to form, light, language, and subtle contrast as emotional and perceptual tools.

 

Her forthcoming poetry collection, What I Carried Into Bloom: A Twenty-Year Curated Collection of Autobiographical Poems, will be published in December 2026. Spanning two decades of writing, the collection traces family, migration, identity, love, loss, motherhood, choice, and legacy. It will also feature three poems by her daughter, Alexa Bruckback.

 

Language has not always been a reliable access point for Rose. Her creative practice developed, in part, as another way of navigating inner experience through shape, image, material, rhythm, and silence. Across mediums, her work becomes a site of translation—allowing internal states to take form when words alone are insufficient.

 

Rose is drawn to moments of quiet tension: where structure meets softness, where containment gives way to growth, and where meaning emerges through restraint rather than declaration. Whether working with image, object, or poem, she approaches art-making as a process of exploration—a way of listening closely and giving form to what asks to be made.

 

Her work does not seek spectacle. Instead, it invites careful looking and reading, offering meaning that unfolds slowly and remains open to interpretation.

 

 

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