ARTiculAction
Steve Wilda (USA) an artist’s statement
Age is being. No one, nothing is immune to ageing. Time, the process of ageing and its ramifications are paramount in my endeavors as a fine artist. Throughout my life’s experience being an artist, it was necessary to make transitions and evolve as a creative thinker and creator, albeit delving backwards. I firmly embrace the presence of the past into the present. Graphite’s subtleties and its ‘black and white’ nostalgic ambiance enthrall me, with its timelessness quality. My work often centers on isolation, total stillness, often a brief glimpse of time, the flash of a captured moment. It can also be eternal, a subject’s final memorandum. The tranquility can be transformed from their decayed vestige to a subtle grace by incorporating a contrasting element, a life form, something contemporary. Bringing the concept full circle. ‘Artistic Regeneration’ is a still life series I am currently painting that’s quite extensive, various themes using disregarded items. A prolonged life to the long abandoned. These could be considered unorthodox, a curiosity, beyond what is expected or accepted as artistic presentation. Decay and ruin are generally not a viable art focus. I don’t see beauty in them per se. Through their character, texture, muted color and undocumented history, they evoke an intense passion and fascination. Upon close scrutiny, the irregularities of oxidized formations, parched shards of wood, frail, frayed fabric are abstractions, until the whole is revealed into something fairly recognizable. Somewhat fairly recognizable, the viewer is not certain they belong there, witnessing an anomaly, being in rather unfamiliar territory. The artwork, requiring either a graphite or paint approach, the underlying essence remains intact. The natural process of time, aging, whether it’s a rusted hulk’s surface, the cracks of an inanimate doll, the wrinkled skin of the elderly, they collectively reveal the culmination and reflection of their lives. All this principally engrosses me, but not totally, there must be the occasional departure. The delicacy, beauty, splendor of nature, in its winter snow, cloud formations, elegancy of one posed, these are additionally motivating in my realm of the well worn. That’s when the art has no hidden meaning, beauty for what it is. Steve Wilda
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