Pretexts and Subtexts: Redux

Sandy Winters' recent paintings present a world blooming in a toxic environment. The semi-domesticated wilderness of exurbs, with picket fences, cornfields and small ponds, becomes the stage for trippy scenes of real and artificial creatures conducting the messy processes of life. Bulbous glass vessels resembling fishbowls, fire hydrants and steatopygic fertility figures are set in landscapes run amok. The vessels seem to mutate in function from one painting to the next, from containers for experiments and random junk left behind to protective cocoons grown by the creatures living inside. …Like Bosch, Winters packs both the insides and outsides of the vessels with scenes of perplexing organic processes.

[Her] style fits firmly into the tendency toward psychedelic puffiness that runs through Charles Burchfield, Dr. Seuss, The Yellow Submarine and Pixar animation. There is the sense in her pieces that any one thing could become any other thing. Tree bark turns into fleshy lips and sex organs, telephones into slugs and mushrooms into submarines. … Mutations arising from unstoppable radioactivity-induced fertility bring to mind the wildlife preserves that flourished around Chernobyl since the reactor meltdown in 1986…. Her idea carries through: no matter how humans mess things up, life will tumble along, with or without us.

Julian Kreimer
Art in America Review, December 2007

Bring 'em On, oil, alluminum, graphite, print collage on wood, 72" x 72", 2007, 07OW06
Devil's Hair Cut, oil, aluminum, graphite on wood, 48" x 48", 2006, 06OW05

Pretexts and Subtexts

Subsequent to the installation Pretexts and Subtexts, I created a six-foot long block print, which appeared to be a cartoon version of the initial installation. Later I started taking apart the blocks and reprinting them arbitrarily on either paper, wood, or metal. Then, with pencil, oil-crayon, or paint I expanded each of the reprinted images into a new, larger composition. In this way an entirely new series was spawned out of the symbolic obliteration of an existing work yet again.

These works reveal Sandy's feeling that "we are part of a process whether it be a cultural one or a non-human creative evolution. That process is always in motion, giving birth to or taking away what we know as control. This is the origin of art."

Three-Toed Sloth, oil on wood, 24" x 24", 2003, 03OW06
Prisoners Of The Mind, oil on metal, 24" x 24", 2003, 03OM05

Genome

Besides the old familiar materials of paint, wood, metal, and ceiling tin, Winters has now introduced other man-made materials such as Children's clothing, especially little girls dresses, possibly suggesting on the one hand a nostalgic reference to her or our own past, but on the other hand suggesting the struggle we have with this system out of our control. Is it consuming us or producing us? Are we part of nature or part of the cultural system we have developed? She has also introduced real birch bark found on dead trees, juxtapositioning it to birch plywood panels, milled and controlled by man.

Genome, oil on wood, and metal, 86.5" x 85" x 6", 2000, 00R09

Cornucopia

In this series it is still apparent that there is a tension between nature and culture and quite possibly the machine is winning out. The tension or coexistence of drawing and painting becomes an even stronger component in these paintings, constantly reminding us of the evolution of the actual work. We are voyeurs of the creative process. It is the process of painting that gives birth to its own emergence.

Three-Toed Cornucopia, oil on canvas, 73" x 65", 1993, 93oc13

The Best and the Worst of Times

Winters' surfaces are densely alive with marks, from the calligraphic fragments in the borders to the repetitive stroking by which she defines her mysterious forms. The linear application of distinct colors creates an effect rather like that of pastels (except for the faint sheen that reveals the medium oil paint) and also makes many of the swollen forms look like cocoons or other wrapped objects. The linear reiteration also contributes inferentially to the forms' three-dimensional impact: because we can see how Winters energetically constructed them, they appear to be substantial.

The effect of these paintings is one of pure pleasure: they convey delight in the richness of pigment and the physical action of applying it to paper or canvas, along with a conceptual enjoyment of making the everyday new.

Janet Koplos
Art In America
June 1992, Volume 80, No. 6, page 107

The Best & Worst Of Times, oil on paper, 58" x 52", 1991, 91OPO2

Talisman

Frank Holt suggests in the introduction to Sandy Winters', exhibition catalogue of 1996 that "In this Winteresque garden, nature is neither still nor controlled. Everything is in a state of movement. Her forms collide, spew, pull apart and mutate their way across the picture plane in a most unruly fashion. There is something strange, perhaps even sinister going on here. There is noise, there is sex, and at times even violence. At times there is a sense that the occupants are only pretending to behave, that all hell will break loose as soon as the gate is closed for the night." --George Adams, 1996 Exhibition Press Release

Talisman, oil on paper, 84" x 81", 1989, 89OP10

War of the Worlds

In [these works, Winters] has substituted mechanistic objects or elements suggesting tribal artifacts. While a certain romanticism has pervaded her art, exalting the dangerously exotic and vaguely recalling Rousseau's fabulous jungles, these new oils on paper and canvas are more aggressive and deliberately less beguiling.

Previous tensions have now escalated into conflict, as Winters employs ever more dramatic imagery, scale and sense of volume. Part of the drama arises from the way the angular boundaries of the compositions fall within the edges of the white canvas or paper. Her compelling works push and spill into the viewer's space, contrasting the dark, rich colors of the organic forms with the dull brown and gray tones of the objects and artifacts.

. . .The belligerent fusion of mechanistic and organic forms may also point to the consequences of environmental rape. . . . Contents are under pressure in Winters' art, sparking a conflict between creative and destructive energies.

Elisa Turner,
Art news, Fall 1990, Volume 89, No. 8, page 203

War Of The Worlds, oil on paper, 68" x 52-1/4", 1990, 90OP19

Relief Paintings

Sandy Winters has always focused on voluptuous, vegetal forms. In densely packed paintings and mixed-media reliefs, she has described the sensual colors and contours of foliage and fruits whose luxuriant growth is faintly menacing. She explores the tension between ripeness and rot, procreation and decay, while working the tangled stems and rotund pods and blossoms for their nearly abstract, three-dimensional presence.

In these works, Winters has [carved] architectural fragments, such as columns and capitals, nearly obscured by the smothering embrace of lush vegetation.

Elisa Turner
Art News, Fall 1990, Volume 89, No. 8, page 203

Natural Selection, mixed media, 26" x 23", 1986, 86WR03