between lost and found
October 24-December 18, 2019
Reception: October 24, 6-8p.m., Gage Gallery
Wendland’s brightly colored, mixed media paintings set up conflicts between contradictory shapes, encouraging an encounter and awareness to these relationships in our landscape.
Artist Statement
Collecting from the natural world and influence of architecture, my work explores the abstract gestures beneath the organic and structural. My relationship to our ever-shifting landscape fuels my current practice. I observe my presence to these spaces through sketching from observation. Elements of these sketches lead to my larger works, a layered process of painting utilizing acrylic and gouache on paper and duralar. Pinned layers of floating strokes create multiple layers for interaction.
Grounded in an interplay of color and shape, a visual language between two-dimensional and three-dimensional segments is formed. My work sets up conflicts between contradictory shapes, encouraging an encounter and awareness to these relationships in our landscape.
By recalling my encounters, the work assembles momentary glimpses and memories of landscape in space. Through these explorations, the work confronts viewers’ assumptions about space and place, while casting familiar landscapes into new contexts.
Bio
Lyz Wendland is a visual artist living and working in Stillwater, Minnesota. She received her MFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and her BFA in drawing, painting and art history from Minnesota State University, Mankato. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums regionally and nationally. Lyz has been the recipient of a Jerome Foundation Project Grant and a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant. She has received numerous faculty development grants and awards for her research on improving participation, critical thinking and motivation relating to art critiques in studio courses. Currently, Lyz is Assistant Professor of Art at Augsburg University in Minneapolis, Minnesota teaching drawing, painting and design.