making history; With paintings that look to the past, Rosson Crow is becoming one of the art world's newest stars.(Biography)

Byline: Elisabeth Franck-dumas

On the afternoon of her sold-out show at Galerie Nathalie Obadia in Paris this fall, the painter

Rosson Crow, wearing a demure little black dress and a strand of pearls, brings to mind a young Audrey Hepburn more than an art-world powerhouse. And yet at the age of 23, she has waiting lists at her New York and Paris galleries, was included in the most recent London Frieze and Paris FIAC art fairs, and will be featured at the Armory Show in New York this month. Not bad for an artist who hasn't even finished her Yale MFA yet.

"I try not to think about it," she says with a lighthearted smile. "I just love to paint." Vigorously layering oil, enamel, and spray paint, Crow has managed to capture the art world's imagination with baroque, colorful dream-

scapes that mix stately interiors and eighteenth-century English

gardens with up-to-date drips and fluorescent hues.

The canvases have already attracted such prominent fans as L.A.-based collector Lenore Schorr and Whitney Museum-affiliated Greg Miller. But their hold has more to do with their intriguing texture and unexpected depth than with superficial flash.