“The Stars that Guide Us,” Roy Rossow’s intriguing and spectacular one-man exhibition in the New Bedford Whaling Museum’s Center Street Gallery, is the culmination of decades of hard work and determination.

Rossow was born in Montego Bay, Jamaica, in 1975. When he was a young boy, he was playing with neighborhood kids, exploring a construction site when he fell into a deep hole. Around the same time, he contracted polio. Tragically, his life was forever altered by limited mobility, and he needed to adjust to using a wheelchair.

After a year spent at the University Hospital of the West Indies in Kingston, the decision was made to move him to the United States for further medical treatment. A bout with pneumonia necessitated a placement with a foster family.

The physical challenges brought about by illness and accident were not the driving forces that directly propelled Rossow toward art, as that interest was there much earlier. As a boy, he gravitated to cartoons and comic books, taking particular interest in the superheroics of Spider-Man as he battled the Green Goblin and his ilk; as well as the teen hijinx of Archie, Betty and Veronica.

His foster mother hired a professional art tutor to guide him. As a high school student, he delved into every art class that was available to him. He attended Salve Regina in Newport, concentrating in studio arts, and soon added another major in information system science, opening greater opportunities for gainful employment.

Graduating in 1998, Rossow went on to earn an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Since that time, he has exhibited at any number of venues, locally and beyond, including Gallery X and the New Bedford Art Museum.

Curated by Ymelda Rivera Laxton, assistant curator of contemporary art and community projects for the Whaling Museum, “The Stars that Guide Us” is a triumphant showcase for Rossow’s talents. She notes that “Rossow’s contemplative works create a sense of place.”

One cannot argue with that assessment. Rossow’s primary motif for the exhibition is the busy New Bedford harbor, rife with an array of vessels of the sea, which he paints from his downtown studio. His workspace has an almost unobstructed view down Union Street, alongside the shimmering iconic cupola atop the museum.

Rossow has noted the cupola as an inspiration. And as he increased the scale of his paintings through the use of a hydraulic lift to navigate across the canvases, he is thrilled to create work of a larger scale and to explore the physicality of paint itself, stating that he finds reward in the ability to bring the scenes from New Bedford’s waterfront to life.

The South Coast artist community has no dearth of adept marine painters. And many of them are more than fine observers and illustrators of the milieu of the waterfront. So what is it about Rossow’s paintings that elevates his work beyond observational realism to something bordering the transcendent?

First of all, there is a razor sharp precision in his ability to render what he observes, but it is not rote replication. He is seeing something else. Something beyond the norm.

In Rossow’s “Container Ship at Night,” a massive vessel with extended cranes — an ordinary scene in any port city — becomes extraordinary. Against an oppressively dark sky, with what appears to be a full moon off in the distance, the structure of the ship and the cranes glow with unexpected hues. The colors include an acidic green, canary yellow, the orange of a ripe tangerine and an unapologetic pulse of magenta.

In “Blue McKinley,” the sterns of three moored boats face the viewer, their lights reflected in the subtle ripples of the oily water. The night sky is absurdly indigo and the yellow of the lights are almost too yellow to grasp. Yet against all odds, it works, largely because Rossow wants us to believe it. 

All of the harbor scenes exist within the embrace of night and where the blackness of the water bleeds into the ebony of the heavens, with no clear delineation, the colors of all else pop off the surface. 

“Boats Nocturne” features a few boats at dock, with their hulls as black as the water on which they float. The masts project upward into the night, several as bright orange as traffic cones. In the background, there are several buildings, including an olive green tenement, illuminated by its own porch light.

There is something melancholy about “Night Departure,” in which a small craft leaves the harbor, light cast on the hoist and the masts. Behind, there appears to be a mountain range, which if so, is of Rossow’s invention as New Bedford is many miles from such.

All of these paintings are indicative of the inventive visual sensibility of the artist. While Rossow is firmly grounded in realism — even if he has invented a mountainscape — it is a realism permeated with preternatural deployment of color. 

And that is Rossow’s true strength. He is intrigued with the power of color, embracing its ability to glow and then ratcheting it up even further. Rossow recently mentioned that once a certain level of intensity is reached, it is hard to back off from it, and he sees no reason to do so. The luminosity has a life of its own.

He has had a lifelong fascination with astronomy, and the exhibition features two of his paintings of stars and suns, which are interesting in their own right, but perhaps somewhat less successful as they are less grounded. Or maybe unmoored.

This is a connection between the astronomic work and the waterfront paintings as one begins to see a correlation between the night stars and the lights aboard the boats and piers, as the latter become terrestrial constellations.

Rossow’s approach to the color and light in the night is uniquely his own, much like Van Gogh’s understanding of starry nights was his alone.

That’s pretty good company.

“The Stars that Guide Us” is on display at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, 18 Johnny Cake Hill until April 21, 2024.

Email Don Wilkinson at dwilkinson@newbedfordlight.org