ARTIST STATEMENT

Meg Wolfe Artist Statement: Print version

 

I paint from still points, from dreams, from memory. Sometimes I will set up a composition from which to begin, then as the work evolves the inexplicable elements also emerge. I love to write, but there are so many things I see and know and sense that are conveyed so much better without words.

I was born in Indiana in 1955 and grew up on a farm. Childhood illness resulted in hearing loss at the age of four, which steadily increased in severity until I was profoundly deaf by college. The relative isolation of both geography and deafness set the stage for a rich interior life in which intense visual cues play starring roles. It is from this way of being that many of the elements of my compositions take on an iconic quality, but not necessarily a symbolic one.

Garden images have no meaning other than to capture the nature of one's satisfaction in gardening. I'm only moderately successful at growing plants but the act of gardening itself is its own reward, pleasure in the plants, the elements, the tools, the clay pots, the connection with the earth itself. Likewise with images of looking out a window, interacting with a cat, making food, or drinking coffee or tea. These are not symbols of domestic bliss, but familiar processes in the course of which I often have a satisfying connection to a larger reality even when I am alone. Assemblages are a different matter. Most are conceptual compositions of found objects and words which start from an idea, a phrase, or even a pun, then evolve as they are built, moving into areas of understanding for which there are no words.

 

Some of the figurative assemblages are no more or less than what they appear to be, such as the angel figures. I like these totem-like constructions popping up in the corners of porches and gardens, a sort of artist's homage to the genius loci. A sense of place, then, seems to be the common thread in my work, the relationship between my surroundings and myself. It would explain my attraction .to older homes, older neighborhoods, England, gardens, and elements of interiors from my childhood, such as the checkerboard floor in my grandmother's sunroom. And the cats.

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