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About The Artist |
Charles WinceArt critics recognized Charles Wince, a self-taught artist from Columbus, Ohio, favorably since the 1980’s. However, Wince’s career has experienced a series of starts and stops. Long dry spells were brought on by bouts of clinical depression as well as a rather hedonistic lifestyle. Earlier paintings exhibited this and the canvases were ruled and driven by a cacophony of subject matter in which humorous touches battled it out with bizarre, tightly wound bombastic creatures and creations.Charles’ most recent "break" was spent taking care of his elderly parents. Being that he is an only child and his parents live 30 miles away, he had no time to paint. With the passing of his mother, Wince found his focus and inspiration had completely shifted and began to produce simplistic works in the shape of mandalas. Wince’s intrique with mandalas stems from the long history of this symbol as seen in Hindu and Buddhist beliefs. The mandala symbolizes "the universe" or "wholeness" in its concentric structure. ‘Flower Arrangements for the Apocalypse’ exhibits the bittersweet, the melancholy of life itself, yet is comforting because of the familiarity of the mandala. This body of work reflects on the beauty and ugliness of life at the same time. These latest paintings have been inspired by the sickness sustained by Charles’ mother and her subsequent death. Clearly, the subject matter is flowers, but the complex symbolism brought to the forefront is about life, beauty, sex - all of which are in a tug of war with other elements: the rather short life cycle of the flower and the reminder of funerals in the arrangement of flowers.
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