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November Issue 2004

Rabold Gallery in Aiken, SC, Features Works by Wanda Steppe

The Rabold Gallery in Aiken, SC, will present the exhibition, Contemplating Freedom, featuring new oil paintings by Wanda Steppe of Rock Hill, SC, from Nov. 18 to 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. This resulted in placing one of her works in the prestigious statewide Triennial 2001 at the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia, SC. 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.

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 further information check our SC Commercial Gallery listings, call the gallery at 803/641-4405 or e-mail at (raboldgallery@bellsouth.net).


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