Born in 1955 and brought up
in London, Eleanor studied at Hornsey School of Art, Winchester
and Chelsea College of Art (MA in Painting). For many years
she was based in Norfolk, but now divides her time between
studios in the USA and the UK.
“Eleanor Wood. has skirted the periphery of Minimalism for her entire career,
fine-tuning her obsessive, hypersensitive and exquisite miniature technique.
In 2002 she moved from her native England to California, the displacement serving
as catalyst for a body of work that demonstrates a departure from her previous
practice, and which is distinct from Minimalist orthodoxy.
The assertive color saturations are new to Wood’s previously monochrome
repertoire. They are achieved through painting washes of watercolor onto the
reverse side of absorbent paper. Waxed Japanese paper is then glued over the
front surface as a barrier on top of which intricate layers of oil pastel are
applied. The effect is one of finely calibrated pulsations of light and matter
that mirror, on a microcosmic level, the tension between embedment in, and flotation
above, the paper support of the central colored rectangles.
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The work suggests that the universe, both
internal and external, emerges and dissolves with respiratory
regularity, and in this sense it is actually breathtaking.”
(Extract from Eleanor Wood: Don
Soker Contemporary Art, San Francisco by
David Olivant)
“Eleanor Wood seems to have
brought Minimalism to a new level with work that ….
speaks eloquently about the vicissitudes of migration and
change. She uses paper that absorbs color to varying
degrees, and by perforating it with tiny pinpricks, she creates
subtle, eloquent collages resembling small windows that leave
despite their size, a large impression.”
(Extract from Just Visiting at Huntington Beach Art Center, California
by Daniella Walsh)
“Exploring the borders between illusion and reality, the works in the show
move from a dry grid of tiny lines on a warm, gray-brown background to an evocative
composition of ghostly rectangular shapes interrupted by a lush, painterly field
of sanguine pigment. Wood’s works manage to be both austere and beautiful,
fragile yet powerful, and one hopes to see more of them.”
(Extract from Shifting Borders at JayJay Gallery,
Sacramento by Victoria Dalkey)
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