Art Exhibition: Andre Van Der Wende: 'Crossroads'

Artist Statement:

In the over 40 years that I’ve been painting, this work represents a creative breakthrough I had at the end of 2023. Using a largely monochromatic palette influenced by black and white photography, I found a satisfying blend of the formal and the gestural as it relates to the memory of experience, and how we frame a story around that experience that exists outside of reality, outside of time. I’ve always been an abstract painter but my work is informed by the natural world around me, particularly the movement of water — clouds over the ocean, or the bounce of light across a pond and the roll of the landscape around it. I’m not interested in painting what I see, but I am interested what it feels like to be immersed in nature — the sounds, the smells, the temperature of the air —and how that experience is specific to a sense of place, both here on Cape Cod and my spiritual home back in New Zealand.