Wayne Toepp

The Messenger

Oil on canvas 

36 × 48 inches

More Info:

An Annunciation/ traditional composition; Gabriel on left, Virgin on right

Bio:

Wayne Toepp is a Hudson Valley painter living in Poughkeepsie and maintaining a studio in Hyde Park. His work has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions spanning four decades as he has continued to examine the boundaries between abstraction and representation.His process is driven by the material qualities of oil paint, layering thick paint applications alternated with delicate glazes. Toepp activates mystical and poetic potentialities, all the while embracing contradiction as a viable creative outcome . The atmospheres and images within his works carry potent associations with both art historical and literary references, from northern romantic painting and haunted surrealist tableaus to images called forth by works of Samuel Beckett and T. S. Eliot. Toepp’s paintings are not bound to straightforward representations of the visible world; instead, they tread in more mystical, poetic realms. His compositions evoke a sense of mystery and ambiguity, presenting images that suggest rather than explicitly show.The muted interiority of his paintings suggest half-lit chambers and the barely discerned outlines of presences – everything in a state of luminescent flux, evoking memories of place and otherworldly light.

Statement:

Painting is a way of being and an act of continual noticing. The studio routine approaches ritual and, in the best scenario, some magic occurs. The paintings are composites – abstract but figural, insistently physical but transient and poetic. Through layered applications and scraping away of paint a new form emerges. In their muted interiority the paintings suggest worlds in flux, constantly shifting between the known and unknowable.