Wendy Simmons Art Opening
FINAL FRIDAY December 29
4-7P FREE | ALL AGES
Showing till Friday, January 26
Artist's Statement:
I dropped out of DAAP in 1988, which means I never learned the rules about making art.
During the pandemic, I returned to painting. A necessary hiatus from alcohol made me acutely aware of many hours in each day that had been blurry for some time. I walked for hours, often in Brighton and the West End, taking iPhone pics of graffiti and structures. I acquired the belongings of a deceased hoarder, filling my garage with crates of Playboy and Scientific American magazines from the 1960’s and 70’s. I began digging through the detritus of another life, and my own.
My latest series, Personal Archaeology, grew from this digging; cutting and saving certain images, scraping away old paint from canvases-previous work I had done while trying to be and make something I am not. I began to see portals and windows into layers of past work-I had done this before. Something interesting, and often beautiful to me, began to emerge. Patterns, old ideas, shapes and images I had forgotten. I began reworking dozens of old pieces, and it saved me. Personal Archaeology, for me, is the belief that we can have a renaissance of self over and over. We can observe ourselves, forgive mistakes and live in The Now, with the messiness and beauty, sorrow and love, loss and rebirth that resides in all of us; not always beautiful, but true.
