A Closer Look: Aron Wiesenfeld

A CLOSER LOOK

Aron Wiesenfeld

The memories of nature are within us. Perhaps unknown to ourselves, each of us is a secret envoy of the earth and we carry out things in the name of nature that we’re not even aware of. —John O’Donohue, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace. Harper Perennial, 2005

Aron Wiesenfeld’s artwork awakens memories of a youth in love with nature: lying belly-down on a sun-warmed bridge; the ocean fog as it sneaks up; the scent of pine needles saying it’s still summer in the coastal mountains. In thoughtful words, the artist shares how his own memories are at the heart of his work.

“I had a lot of freedom as a kid,” he says. “When I was four, I moved to Santa Cruz with my mother and brother.” Wiesenfeld’s childhood recollections of that California beach town lie at the heart of his paintings. “In my memories I’m usually alone, riding my bike after school, or at the [San Lorenzo] river, or at the beach at dusk. I feel freedom—and a bit lonely. These feelings are what I want to capture in my work.”

The process begins when Wiesenfeld is moved by some scene from an ill-defined landscape, often infused with a hint of wildness, perhaps danger, such as a city’s outer limits or the border of the countryside. “If I were a movie scout, these would be my movie locations,” he says of the landscapes that resonate with him. “I see my own emotion in external form.” Once home, he records the image of that external form in a quick sketch. What he calls “doing nothing and daydreaming” is vital to creating a dialogue with that captured moment. “I need stories,” Wiesenfeld says. “They are like food and shelter to me.”

As Wiesenfeld begins to mentally inhabit the captured landscape, he transfers a refined sketch to canvas. The paintings develop as his state of mind changes. Sometimes he paints over an image, starting anew until a character and story emerge that confirm his attraction to the original landscape.

Wiesenfeld’s paintings suggest that the landscape and the figure placed within it are indeed parts of each other. The human subjects relate to the places, and the places, in turn, embrace them. The title they share is a metaphor for their coupling: The Cabin, The Wall, The Bridge. These are transitory relationships.

“The feeling of being in between a change in life is powerful to me,” says Wiesenfeld. “It’s like being in a state of limbo, like crossing a river but being caught in the center.”

The viewer sees this state of suspension in Wiesenfeld’s compositions; there is often an adolescent alone in

Opposite: Aron Wiesenfeld, Laia, gouache on paper, 15” × 12”. Above: Aron Wiesenfeld, The Wall, oil on panel, 21” × 17.5”.

Above: Aron Wiesenfeld, The Bridge, etching, 14” × 17”. Opposite: Aron Wiesenfeld, Rubik’s Cube (detail), gouache on paper, 10” × 14”.

a silent landscape. The freedom and loneliness of the artist’s youth permeate the scene. For Wiesenfeld, the fictional aspect of a work of art makes it possible for him to confront a difficult situation.

Of these wild places, the artist says, “You can do what you want to do, but it’s also frightening. Fear is the other side of freedom’s coin. If you’re going to have personal sovereignty, there is the possibility things could go wrong. Bad things can happen.”

It’s no accident that Wiesenfeld’s imagery evokes a potential for mishap, a quality that springs from his early career as an illustrator working for Marvel and DC Comics, which he pursued after attending the Cooper Union School of Art, in New York. It also links him historically to the Romantic painters and their expression of sublime fear.

After leaving the comics industry, Wiesenfeld earned a BFA from the ArtCenter College of Design, in California. The influence of painters such as Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Caspar David Friedrich, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler emerged not only in his subdued palette but in his oft-explored visual theme of an enlarged landscape dwarfing a lone figure.

In his creative relationship with the distinctive brushwork of his predecessors Wiesenfeld finds an intimacy untouched by time. “There is a telepathic meeting of the minds,” he says of this dynamic. “I take what I learn from them and put it back into my own work.”

Studying their technique helps Wiesenfeld find a balance between his internal world and the real world. “Having a rich fantasy life is a great gift and a real challenge,” he continues. “My internal dialogue is often louder than what someone might say to me . . . Other artists can give us a greater understanding of our own minds, our shared history.”

In this way, the freedom and loneliness Wiesenfeld explores through the landscape and his memories are met with a timeless camaraderie.

—Susan Guevara