Virginia Wieringa Artist's Statement
No matter what media I use, playing with color, shape and texture is a joyous experience and the art process is meditative for me. In my creative work I use acrylic media, painting landscape and abstractions, sometimes in pure acrylic paint and other times utilizing mixed media. My realistic work is self-explanatory. In the mixed media work, I use liquid watercolor and acrylic ink applied with a mouth atomizer (like an early ancestor of the air brush). I combine this with colored pencil, oil pastels, gesso and collage. I’ve developed a vocabulary of symbols in stencils and block prints that recur in my work. T he explanation of abstract work like this is left up to the observer. Aside from a vague story line, the meanings are open to the viewer’s interpretation. My latest art journey is using tissue paper painted with acrylic paint to include in my mixed media collage work.
My pieces often reflect the mysteries I perceive in the world. I’m inspired by things I read and hear as well as things I see. One quote that inspired a series is by Rainer Maria Rilke from Letters to a Young Poet:
Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves... Don't search for answers now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
As a Christian, I marvel at the salvation story, wonder about the way things are and about the way our lives are tied together across time and space. The people in my work could be communities of faith, a cloud of witnesses, disciples or just people. The Celtic knots, puzzle pieces and labyrinths are my way of contemplating the twists and turns in life and the surprising way things fit together. When I’m working with the layers in acrylics, mixed media, icons or photos I feel like I’m ‘living the questions’.
For many years I taught art, first to elementary students and then college students. During that time, I studied painting and drawing and experimented with many media and subjects. Since I retired from teaching, I’ve been blessed to be able to devote more time to this creative, contemplative journey and develop my own artistic voice. I see my work is a visual response to faith, the mysteries of life and the world God created.