My work develops from a native world full of life’s bewildering diversity and design. With my finger to the air, I imprint on my brain a stripped-down version of the shapes I see— the bends and slopes and the rounding or rigidity of a posture. These images come to me as emotions and stay until I lay them on paper. For example, I might see a young willow that has bent to a gale, its back broken, its limbs falling forward, which may present itself in the shape of an animal bowing to its fate, begging retreat. Or it could become two owls furrowed into an arched buttress against a cold boreal night air.
I fold my imagery into those assumed shapes to create a work that conveys the emotions of my personal vision, apart from the other creatures’ genuinely indelible and individual spirits. This is not simply an artistic choice but comes from the fabric of who I am. It is a diary of my life and a documentary of what it means through different stages.
All my work comes from an understanding of the irreplaceable presence of the creatures with whom we share this world. And I acknowledge that through and because of millions of years of evolution, they bear a clear and a certain dignity of their own. I attempt to bring this awareness to my paintings, and to the children’s books, cards, murals, and work done for land conservation.
I make my own paint with eggs and powdered pigments, and sometimes dry pond algae over clay molds I’ve sculpted to become the 3-D parts of a painting. Often, I add dried plant material to stand in for paint or shape sculptures out of paper.
And to this end, I believe we can discover, through imagination, the minutiae and breadth of another being, a living force whose strangeness and chaos may remind us of ourselves.
Roberta Wilson
Ghent, New York
Ghent, New York