Possibly half of Rossi’s paintings are of naked human bodies, portrayed boldly, colourfully, and often displaying their sex for all to see. He explores the whole gamut of raw human experience, from warmth and pleasure to bondage and humiliation. Human sexuality for Rossi cannot be separated from our animal physicality; it has little to do with conventional beauty, but his very directness offers a certain quality of corporeal reality – tender, exposed, complex, chaotic – with which anyone who has experienced true sexual passion can identify.

As Rossi says of his approach to his work, ‘I do not believe that there are rules for any type of art, except that an artist’s work should always be the best they are capable of without considerations of acceptability, money or taste. Works of art are vitally important, because they are the only artefacts without any utilitarian purpose, and almost the only ones which are not consumed relatively quickly. They are our claim to permanency and immortality.’