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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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