Wendy Stokes

Resilience

12th to 30th October 2010

Artist Statement

I have lived for many years on the edge of the ocean: this edge, the fluid space and the myriad shifts of change and residue have for me, become translated into a mutable silent language. Working simultaneously has been the idea which emerged during an experience last year, in the dry heat of summer, when I returned to the area of my early childhood: a rural property in central western New South Wales. It had long been abandoned and the home demolished by fire years ago, but what remained was the vestiges of my mother’s hard-won rambling garden.

In the silence of the heat I stood pondering the footprint and histories that we construct, and the remnants which remain; a red bud persevered through the entangled growth. This image has remained with me as something of a metaphor for resilience and strength.

As an active participant and witness of the dynamic coastal fringe environments, the watery spaces and the cyclical shifts of seasons, my work has evolved in an organic manner: creating compositions with washes, painting out spaces and incising intuitive notations. There is still a structuring of space and utilising the negative space of the canvas as in my previous work. The colour, red, has re- emerged in the work after lying dormant for a period of time. The freshness and intimacy of the mark is retained and the untouched ground forms an integral part of building the relationships to develop my dialogue.

The work hopefully will engage through contradictions exploring shifting relationships and visual oppositions of fragility, strength, simplicity, complexity, erasure and resilience.

Wendy Stokes
March 2010

All enquiries welcome: Tel: (03) 9417 2828 Email: enquiries@catherineasquithgallery.com.

Please click on images to enlarge, and view details of works.

Wendy Stokes

Resilient Offerings I

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Resilient Offerings II

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Silent Archetype
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Shift in Time

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Resilient Offerings III

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Fragment
Wendy Stokes

Sprout

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Marked in Time I

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Marked in Time II
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Bleached Memory I

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Bleached Memory II
Wendy Stokes

Fragments of Memory I

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Fragments of Memory II

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Fragments of Memory III
Wendy Stokes

Silent Whisper

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Silent Shift I

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Silent Shift II
Wendy Stokes

Whispered Notes I

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Whispered Notes II

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Whispered Notes III
Wendy Stokes

Resilience I

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Resilience II

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Resilience III