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In a cameo role in Derek Jarman 1978 Jubilee ( for which she also served as wardrobe coordinator), Luciana Martinez De La Rosa plays a ´rich bitch´ murdered with barbed wire by punk rockers. Reclining languorously in her chartreuse-and-lavender bedroom, De La Rosa who grew up in London but says she´s ´of Neapolitan nobility´, smooths her trademark Frida Kahlo-style braids and vamps in a dead cool British accent. `I was typecast´. After fling-jet-set-ing herself, at age 16, into disck-jockeing and clothing designer and, later, filme-work and performance art., de la Rosa, who moved from L.A. to Greenwich Village last summer - seems to have found a permant passion in portraiture. Most often she paints friends, from her highly varied international circle: Archduches Francescan von Habsburg( a former neighbor in London), Bristish fashion-designer Jasper Conran, director Nicolas Roeg and his actress wife, Theressa Russell, a downtown club phenomenon Suzanne Bartsch.
Influenced by 16th-century Florentine courte portraitist Ronzino, de la Rosa´s canvases are anything but diffident : her vivid palettes include magenta, tangerine, and sheets of gold leaf; boldly modeled woman are powerful, confident, and mostly nude. ´I tend to see the sensual side of life - and people´, says de la Rosa, who favored the topless in her club-going youth, but now sells paintings quietly from home. ´I try to get to the very soul of a person, and I think I usually succeed´. .
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