s a r a h w i l k i n s a r t . c o m
A b o u t t h e A r t i s t
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Why the Green Dot? My ideas usually come from something seen or read. I corral visual elements, draw and write. At that point all is flexible in the sandbox. Static images spark a train of thought evoking memories and associations and lead to composite visions. Combining disparate elements and fragments often results in unforeseen synthesis. The inner dialogue operates in a circular way but the actual painting is more linear. Various painting techniques and spatial illusions are employed as needed for their subtle distinctions. Boundaries and proximities of elements become critical. Shape and color are used symbolically. The limitations of the traditional picture plane force focus and selection of details. Paintings become visual metaphors for a finite experience. I explore social practices and conditions in the context of natural and artificial environments. In the social sphere I am interested in collective perspectives, group dynamics, identifying alliances, and the psychology of consumerism. In the vast landscape where social practices operate, I ponder such things as boundaries and turfs, the effects of global urbanization, the implications of expansion into the infinite territory of the Web, the tectonic shifts of cultural terrain. To anchor these complex larger concepts in the personal, I draw from shared but fragmentary daily experience, largely visual, with its cognitive slippage of the strange and the familiar. One day I may give attention to the fact that alligator-eating Burmese pythons are taking over south Florida while I choose to ignore the beaming British Royal family. Another day I may wonder at smelling acrid smoke from Georgia wildfires at my house in North Carolina while contemplating a Luna moth dying on the doorstep. These images may link up or collide in my sketchbook. Anything goes in recombinant mind space. The job of an artist is literally to see and to feel and to question experience. The results, in these days of truth to one’s own vision in art instead of slavish imitation, are individualistic. But that is an enormous challenge to the artist working in directly expressive art forms. It is not so easy to contemplate and reveal the inner self. So what for me begins as selective observation (from a sort of journalistic viewpoint) becomes integrated in the emotionally tempered, psychologically revealing, highly subjective practice of painting. The filtered data has entered the fictional realm of the story. Over time successive paintings become one long meditation, one long slow movie. Viewers validate and extend the dialogue. Answer to Why the Green Dot?
“ Abstract means to draw from or separate. In this sense every
artist is abstract —
“In the Last Chance Saloon, Tombstone, Arizona,
Photo by Wojtek Wojdynski |