Biography
Rowena Wright – Art Statement
The nature of my work is derived from my materials, which suggest the boundaries of all possibilities. My working process is a physical engagement against resistance, bending, crushing and beating to allow a metamorphosis which brings to life a new persona, with enhanced patina, tone, texture and a new physical form. My art becomes a vocabulary without words that emerges through the labour of my hands.
Working with sheet metals a hosted a divergence from my previous figurative sculpture, so that, inherent in my abstract forms, despite relinquishing frank corporeality, a subtle inference of the ‘body’ remained. In the final denouement this has become a uniquely identifying feature and pivotal in the development in my work.
It is this alchemy which I seek to imply, so that if my sheet steel appears fluid and my copper is reminiscent of skin it indicates to me that my intentions are being realised. I love the challenge of working with natural materials whose own distinct qualities resonate with the beauty of their primary nature and earth itself. I approach the materials sensitively and labour to uncover possibilities that lie within them until a vision emerges for me to follow. The ‘primitive’ features in some of my work, through my use of wood and metal share elemental links with man and nature.
The physical, repetitive engagement in my work provides an absorbing creative flow that forges an aesthetic statement in the visual language of form.
