Abigail Wamboldt

Artist Statement:

I paint out of the memory of a sensation or from visual material that manifests itself in my imagination. Through this process I discuss and explore how the sexual self is formed and acted upon. Specifically I consider this through the experience of being a woman and a lesbian who is white. I attempt to be inclusive in my work without appropriating others pain.

I am drawn to the two dimensional format because it feels like a window into another world. However I sometimes feel the need to break the frame and bring the world of my imagination into three dimensional installation. I gravitate towards tactile materials, such as paint and charcoal, that allow for my body to become physically immersed in the experience of producing an artwork. My body is the vehicle for my interior images so I view the active component of making something the most effective form of communicating my interior vision.

I experience emotion and sensation visually. My interior world is a constant writhing of broken images. The images emerge from what feels like tumultuous, muddy ocean. Sometimes they rise up with clarity and I can see the completed image of an artwork in my head. Other times my interior world is an upheaval of indiscernible flesh and I have to discover the work through creating it.

I have a silent soul. Even when I scream in my head, it is not a noise but a great shaking. I have recurring nightmares in which I can not scream and am subject to great pain which I must endure with my tongue stuck down my throat. My pictures are like silent screams. Because I often feel struck dumb by what it is polite to say or not to say, I let my pictures loose. In all their dark and colorful rage they both scream and cackle. I am a lover of living in all of it’s joyful, savage, loneliness. It is this endurance of humanity that I want to capture, this beautiful violence of existence.