Aniela Izynska Woodward

Artist Statement

I started my major works in Montreal in the '70s with hard-edged abstraction – geometry its structure and color its subject matter – the power of color, each color bringing with it the full weight of subjective and universal interpretations. That was the beginning of an evolution that started in Modernism – the esotericism of Malevich and Kandinsky, Cubism, Bauhaus, Islamic and Hindu geometry – abstract art as a vehicle to transcribe the untranscribable.

In Morocco in 1969 I found myself immersed in Moroccan architecture and Islamic art. The focus of such detailed work was meditative and not ambition driven – it was art. In Algeria in 1970 I had the privilege of entering a mosque. There the guide showed me a room where men would sit facing a wall with geometric patterns carved into it, and meditate while gazing at these patterns. This was a revelation to me and I immersed myself in the study of those designs, mathematical and abstract, with the spiritual dimension firmly in mind. This spiritual dimension has continued to inform all my work, even the most minimal and abstract.

I arrived in Tehran in 1978, just in time for the Iranian revolution. It was a tense time and I didn’t produce much art, though Iran itself was inspiring, with a new appreciation for Islamic design and a trip through the rugged countryside of Afghanistan.

Back in Vancouver in 1979 I found a studio in Gastown. My major works from this period were large geometric canvases in acrylic. During this period I also began a series of smaller works in gouache, derived and interpreted from traditional Islamic geometric art.

In 1985 I opened a studio Los Angeles and plunged into the medium of oils, turning away from hard-edge and working the oils on the canvas in a loose, gestural way, often with a palette knife.

In the mid nineties, I moved to New Mexico, a brilliant landscape with clear skies and intense color. In my Albuquerque studio the work took a sharp turn to the minimal with layered surfaces in transparent paints. Many of these works are triptychs and diptychs, formats that relate directly to structure: simple structure, elemental and reduced. The stretcher embodies the most basic, formal aspect of architecture: geometry elaborated in multiples, thereby giving the work its architectonic form. The painting itself gives expression to what has always been the central focus of my work: color.

Today there's a renewal of interest in abstraction and its demanding dialogue. "The essential in art is not the work itself but the process it causes the audience to undergo," Glenn Gould. This is a fresh opportunity for my work to be seen and experienced.

I currently reside in Victoria, BC, Canada.