Kay Wood’s latest mixed media series of works on canvas, paper and wood, Apposites Attract, is dialectical in essence, split literally and metaphorically, every element balanced by opposition or apposition. Warm, even hot, in coloration--yellow, reds, oranges, some intense, some muted, they complement the cool greens and blues of the last four to five years as well as break away from them. Her formats, variously scaled, from letter-sized to large, are both conventionally flat or folded like accordions, “books” which she hangs vertically, some panels angled out from the wall like sculpture. Their dimensionality is also actual, projecting outward and illusionistic, falling inward. This duality extends to the field itself which, divided in half, pairs an abstraction with a delicately drawn image of a fruit or plant which in turn suggests the human body. These surfaces are beautifully rendered, visually penetrable but hard, sealed, the pictures and marks embedded in many layers of translucent acrylic, layers that glow as the light passes through them, activating the color. Like fossils in resin, the configurations are preserved and presented, specimens from a cabinet of curiosities, visual tests to be decoded. The surfaces are also dual in nature, slick on the topmost level but textured beneath while imagery is both hand-made and digitally produced. Wood is deeply concerned with social issues, such as violence against women and the degradation of the environment but this is another balancing act; she wanted to be less polemical, less fixed in the grouping as she approached the “elemental life of spirit,” reconciling art and nature, the political and the social, reaching for completion through difference--differences of image, style, materials, space--through syllogism and synthesis. a– aLilly Wei, critic, 1999

Spiritual
Kay Wood

Like clouds reflected on moving water, or rain drops running down a window, Kay Wood’s mixed media compositions remain highly suggestive but ultimately ambiguous. Within these gestural, textured fields she generally posits two or three images, which while having more definite forms, still ap-pear mysterious.

In “What comes Up,” Wood uses several media to establish an overall depth. Darks and lights comprised of pencil and acrylic on paper fade in and out like a faint back-gammon board. Furthering the contrast, a section of ink on canvas is imposed vertically. Set into this washy area are two squares which depict images that could be variously read as seeds, bone sockets, sperm or lightbulbs.

Wood sees her work as balancing aesthetic concerns with thematic propositions....The works are handsome and have a dreamy quality. Their success lies in their ability to conflate both the apparent and the apparition. a–a Jeff Wright, Cover Magazine,1998