Marian Wihak - Statement
Boundless: the View From Here, was created for my solo show held in 2007 at the Rotunda Gallery in
Kitchener. The exhibition was an installation of five canvases that essentially constituted a single
32-foot wide panorama. The paintings in this series are inspired by the movement of cloud masses and
weather systems stretching across a 360 degree horizon, as witnessed in Southern Saskatchewan, where
the vast sky is consistently infused with incredible light, offering an abstracted, yet highly compelling
reality
Many ideas from my prior work prevail: The paintings in this series are expansive, stylized representations
that are as much metaphors for spiritual longing as they are portraits of a magnificent geography, and
I continue to be inspired by the ephemeral nature of light and the sustenance it provides in physical,
psychic and symbolic terms. I am interested in a distilling down of imagery, or as Anish Kapoor so succinctly
describes, “….emptying out of form towards a nascent space”. So too, an ongoing goal
in my work has been to render a nuanced collection of images, moments, sensations, which by their nature
are elusive yet deeply resonant or ‘felt’.
The concept of Boundless is a sublime one, that has been universal since the beginning of conscious
thinking, and as I investigated the recorded concept of Boundless further, it increasingly articulated
my intuitive impetus to paint this series. It has been referred to as The Deep, and the Void, the frontier-less
expansion without any circumscribing bounds. The word Chaos has also been used to describe this boundless
Space anddraws its original twofold meaning from the ancient Greek word cha, holding and releasing.
The experience of being within that infinite space both tethers and perhaps diminishes us, yet also exhilarates
and fulfills us.
I want the paintings in this exhibition to manifest on one level as abstracted landscapes that capture
a magnificent geography, yet on a deeper level to reflect upon the conscious consideration of daily existence,
the passages and journeys we all experience, and our ultimate place in the grand scheme of things.
BOUNDLESS: The View From Here
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