Untitled, Horses in Landscape

THEODORE WADDELL, Born 1941

“Waddell’s paintings are a combination of rough marks; thick paint; transparent elegant strokes; and, on a few occasions a slow, hard line scratched into the canvas. You can feel the movement of the paint throughout the paintings but the subjects are frozen. They are not frozen as a stagnant object but captured as a solitary image. Captured, interpreted and enveloped in the landscape. They are carved out of, or laid onto the green and grey-yellow of the spring and summer, or the white canopy of winter. And sometimes there are ghosts in the paintings, the faint image of what has changed in the piece or decays in the pasture. These ghosts refer to Waddell’s interest in life and death and our own mortality. They are metaphors for the struggle and change that is constant in life. In his artist’s statement he says, “The understanding of death brings about a feeling of wonderfulness and appreciation of life and just how fragile and magical it all is.”

Source: theodorewaddell.com