| For more information about this article or gallery, please call the gallery phone number listed in the last line of the article, "For more info..." |
December Issue 2004
Rabold Gallery
in Aiken, SC, Features Works by Wanda Steppe
The Rabold Gallery in Aiken, SC, is offering the exhibit, Contemplating
Freedom, featuring new oil paintings by Wanda Steppe of Rock
Hill, SC, through Jan. 15, 2005. The exhibition includes 20 new
works that inventively synthesize the artist's trademark styles
in still life and landscape paintings.
Steppe has been painting for 25 years, having established a reputation
primarily for still lifes until 1999. "Still lifes are how
I taught myself to paint," she said. "I wanted to paint
in the traditional style with the sense of realism and so I painted
from life." Even so, her characteristically offbeat selection
of subject matter and contemporary aesthetic set her work apart.
"I am drawn to objects past their prime, like worn linens,
overripe fruit, and dead flowers."
When she began painting landscapes five years ago, Steppe sought
inspiration instead from her own imagination. She cultivated a
highly personal style in producing intimate vignettes of land
and sky. In the current exhibition, Steppe is getting back to
her origins in still lifes, but with the lessons she learned in
freeing her imagination while painting landscapes. "I have
wanted to do this for two years," she said. This resulted
in placing one of her works in the prestigious statewide Triennial
2001 at the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia, SC.
In Contemplating Freedom, Steppe creates unlikely juxtapositions
of still life and landscape elements that absorb the viewer into
a moment of private interaction with the work. "My choice
of subjects is personal and objects are used for symbolic purposes
only," she said. "As I learned to paint, I began to
think of objects as something more than they are. I assign values
to objects that are not intrinsically there." These values
are not lost on the viewer. They are perceived and understood
through context and treatment.
Steppe has studied art throughout the Carolinas, particularly
at Winthrop University and Greenville County Museum School of
Art. In recent years, she won a purchase award at the 2000 Anderson,
SC, Arts Council Juried Show, first place at the 2001 Oil Painter's
Open Invitational in Sumter, SC, and a merit award at the 2001
Central South Art Exhibition in Nashville.
For more info check our SC Commercial Gallery listings, call
803/641-4405 or e-mail at (raboldgallery@bellsouth.net).
Carolina Arts is published monthly by Shoestring Publishing Company, a subsidiary of PSMG, Inc. Copyright© 2004 by PSMG, Inc., which published Charleston Arts from July 1987 - Dec. 1994 and South Carolina Arts from Jan. 1995 - Dec. 1996. It also publishes Carolina Arts Online, Copyright© 2004 by PSMG, Inc. All rights reserved by PSMG, Inc. or by the authors of articles. Reproduction or use without written permission is strictly prohibited. Carolina Arts is available throughout North & South Carolina.