Ann White Gallery – Elaine Wilson

Elaine S. Wilson Artist Statement   

“When I’m outside painting, I get into a place in my head where I’m completely oblivious to everything going on around me and I’m utterly, totally engaged with the project.   When I choose a place to paint, I’m looking for the way humans have altered the landscape. I am not interested in any accepted notion of beauty, rather I find that every place has the potential for beauty within it.   In the city it is almost all human intervention and structures.   I love unusual structures and layers of spaces.  When I find a place that intrigues me, I go back there to paint repeatedly and end up with a series of paintings of a place or structure. 

My paintings are about revealing the specific nature of the place through repeated encounters versus capturing a particular moment.  Over several visits, I find out more about a setting to see if I can unearth a rhythm of mark and color that elevates what I notice into something that others will find compelling.    It is essential that the place feel authentic, and be animated by light. 

Every place has stories.  As I work in a place, I discover what they are.  Sometimes stories are brought to a place by the individuals who populate my paintings with their errands, their play, and their work. If I am lucky a person might share their story with me in a chance conversation.  While I choose a site primarily for its visual quality, the stories contribute to the richness of the experience. 

In recent years in DC, I have chosen to paint sites where there is an opportunity to create affordable housing, or where the site has a significant event associated with it, as in the fence around the Capitol or the fence around the Supreme Court.  The narratives going on in these places and structures is compelling to me.   I feel a need to stand and paint the sites in real time, and I have my own thoughts about what the political or societal import is, but I allow the viewer to draw their own conclusions.”art

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Gallery Hours:

Monday – Friday: 9:30 – 5:00 PM

Saturday: 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM