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Michael Ward
Weed Maps
2017

About the Item

Weed Maps This wind-battered sign stands outside an antique mall on Speedway Blvd. in Tucson, Arizona. Is the empty whiteness, devoid of content with an ill-fitting orange top a comment on anything? I'm not saying. Acrylic on GW Canvas 20" x 24" About the Artist: Michael Ward began his artistic career doing pen and ink renderings of historical architecture. He began painting in 1980, first in gouache, then in acrylics. Artists whose work Ward admires and draws inspiration from include Edward Hopper, Charles Sheeler, Richard Estes and Vermeer. He is most interested in depicting what Alan Watts called the mystery of the ordinary; the workaday world we live in without seeing until we are forced to focus upon it, as in a painting. Nearly all his paintings are based on photographs he has taken over the years, primarily of Southern California scenes. Though it was never his intention to depict nostalgic scenes, many of the images he has painted have disappeared or been radically altered in the ever-changing landscape that is Southern California. Thus nostalgia is thrust upon the works. But what Ward is really after is bearing witness, and making people stop what they're doing and pay attention, to something they may have never seen before, but that makes them feel “I know this.” Ward is currently working on a series of house paintings. These simple, ordinary, unnoticed places have hidden interior lives, though they do not reveal them to us. The houses are from a variety of locations in the United States and Mexico. They are the places we grew up in, places of nurture, experience, trial, memory and forgiving. They are all a common size, to symbolize our shared experience of being human. Phyllis Lutjeans, Museum Educator and former curator, has said of his work: “Although Michael Ward may be called a neo-realist painter his work can ultimately be described as abstract realism. The picture image is photographically realistic, but within the context of the painting his compositions are complex and almost abstract. Deciphering the work section by section one sees how a multitude of individual complete compositions are put together to form the entire work. For me the viewer is confronted by a realistic image that puzzles us and clearly tells the story simultaneously.” Or as a young girl viewing his work at the Laguna Festival of Arts remarked, “You make the ordinary look beautiful.” As a painter, Michael Ward is self-taught.

Creator:
Michael Ward (1953)
Creation Year:
2017
Dimensions:
Height: 24 in (60.96 cm)Width: 20 in (50.8 cm)Depth: 1 in (2.54 cm)
Medium:
Canvas,Acrylic
Movement & Style:
American Modern
Period:
2010-
Condition:
Gallery Location:
East Hampton, NY
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU2846822552