~WendyArtist

The Artist's struggle

I am refreshed and enlivened after so much energy and activity from Traditional Art Day!

This past week was an interesting one in my career as an artist. I had submitted three of my paintings to be in the running for a juried competition locally. As most of you know, these are highly subjective affairs, but I was hoping since the juror was a very well known figurative artist, at least ONE of them would be chosen. Nope. All three were denied. That is never easy to accept.

As a good friend has recently taught me though, the Universe works in mysterious ways. The day after I found out I wasn't accepted, I came across an announcement for a show I participated in last year. I contacted the gallery owner, asking if it was too late to enter, and was told that they would love to have me in their show! For the month of November I will have THREE of my paintings in a show called Exposed: Nudes in Art at Litmus Gallery in Raleigh, NC! Yippee!! (Two of the three were paintings not accepted in the juried show. Hee hee.)

Here on Deviant Art, we have the luxury of seeing so many great works of art. We have direct access to the wonderful artists creating that work. The space and community here is infinite for people all over the world to be exposed to my own work. It seems to be getting increasingly difficult to find actual physical space opportunites to get exposure for my work. One dilemma I am faced with, living in the Southern region of the United States, is that nudes are very hard to break into galleries. Private spaces can't sell them very well, and therefore aren't interested, and publicly funded galleries have their boards and sources of money advising them about who should be represented.

It is a dilemma. I can't do anything other than the work I do, and never want to compromise that. I will certainly keep trying though, and will keep working. But it is nice to know I can always come here for feedback from others going through the same artist struggle.

Traditional Art Day!

Thanks to Sbaraci for organizing this. It is important to recognize and encourage traditional art mediums, here in the virtual world of Deviant Art and in our own communities.

There are so many wonderful traditional artists I have come across on this site, and adding to my favorites gallery has become an experience I look forward to daily. I have found myself increasingly searching out other traditional artists. Seeing the art others are creating inspires my own work, teaches me how I can push myself to use paint, textures, themes, color, tools, etc... differently and effectively. That is very valuable to me.

Which traditional artist would I like to feature? That's a tough one! Here are some of the artists I find myself adding to my gallery on a regular basis though.

Great color and details!

Very interesting themes.

Great style and composition

Very developed and mature style.

A surrealist master of the highest caliber

I am so envious of his colors!

Just wonderful paintings. I have enjoyed our correspondence.

Extremely interesting approach to figurative art.

So playful and fun.

Of course.

And for the sculptors

A living, breathing modern day michaelangelo. I am humbled to be in his presence.

Thanks to all of the many traditional artists who inspire me daily!

Wendy

A gift from S.

In order to truly qualify as art, a work has to have in it some element of subversion - otherwise it may be illustration or decoration, but never truly art.

In order to truly qualify as love, a relationship has to have in it some element of subversion - otherwise it may be convenience or comfort, but never truly love.

I am about to start on a new series dealing not just with the female form, but also including the Male, and exploring their interactions together.

Virgin/Whore : Saint/Sinner

The images of Woman and Man function as universal Archetypes: Goddess/God, Mother/Father, Lover/Warrior. These are easily understood.

But in their essential states, working together the Female and Male can also act as symbolic vessels containing a multitude of dualities, or opposing forces, of the emotional and physical that are necessary for the balance of things.

In the emotional realm Woman and Man can represent:
Love/Fear, Inspiration/Torture, Reverence/Desecration, Empathy/Apathy, Idealization/ Indifference.

In the physical other dualities appear:
Passion/ Repression, Sacred/ Profane, Worship/ Revulsion,
Dominate/Submissive, Creation/Destruction, Ineffable/Mundane,
Immortality/ Death, Euphoria/Frustration.

Standing alone each Male and Female archetype contains their own unique symbolic duality in their idealized form.

For the Woman- the Virgin and the Whore.
For the Man- the Saint and the Sinner.

The possibilities of visually representing so many emotional and physical dual aspects within symbols of the Male and Female that are themselves dualities are endless. The variations are exponential.

It is a wonder common ground is ever found between Woman and Man.

How do we recognize, but disavow, the opposing forces presented by these dualities without losing the inherent value of the Male/Female Archetype? How do Men and Women reconcile all these aspects within themselves and with each other to reach a more Divine Human balance-the ultimate Archetype?

Woman Series


Where is She? Where is the Woman that appears in our collective images and stories again and again since the beginning of time, throughout all histories and cultures? She always manages to find a way to reveal herself in Art and Literature in spite of the predominant dogmas she has found herself in. With or without adornment, she is her own symbol.

But where is she in my culture, in my time in history; where does she exist in my experience as a woman? I explore these questions in my Woman Series by focusing on the nude female form. Woman as a primary and primitive force also informs the color palette and rendering I use for her representation. The reoccurring red haired figure is self-portrait only in the sense that her concerns and stories are the same for me as they are for every woman. Woman is a subject that is at once powerful; transcendent; intimately familiar; mysterious; ineffable; a cause for fear, adoration, oppression, reverence, unease; and as an invocation.

I was in the firmament
With Mary Magdalene;
I obtained my inspiration
From the cauldron of Caridwen.
From the Hanes Taliesin in The White Goddess, Robert Graves