Wendy Stokes

...making images which allow for moments of pause and a celebration of spirit. Her work shifts between painting,drawing and printmaking disciplines where one informs the other rather than a replication. 

Stokes lives by the ocean and draws from her deep connection to the landscape. Her works purposefully wrestle with ambiguous ground; between the Romantic lineage of landscape representation and Modernist Abstraction, while also challenging contemporary notions between drawing and painting. Historical references, particularly Monet, resonate with a sensorial response to atmosphere and commonalities of terrain.[1] 

Playing with notions of space, Stokes fuses ambiguous islands of floating colour and lyrical markmaking, punctuated by contradictions and triggers pulled directly from landscape. The works present as residues of lived encounter; documentations to sensorial grabbing's as one moves through a landscape; while drawing from the archaeology of memory. 

They are works which resonate with collective meaning, connecting to sites of private territory, experienced terrains; inviting the viewer to embark on an immersive encounter into landscapes which universally bind us; connecting and intertwining with stored experiences from the recesses of memory: mutable edges of the ocean, alpine landscapes and snippets of rural encounter.

2016  MFA  Research UNSW Art and Design

2014  Resident Cite International des Arts Paris  UNSW Research Studio

1986  Graduate Diploma Visual Arts, Sydney College of the Arts

1980  Diploma in Art, Newcastle College Advanced Education

Member Sydney Printmakers 1980-2023