Vance Wingate

Vance Wingate
Technical Director / Gallery Coordinator
Department of Visual Arts
East | West Galleries

Professional Preparation
BA - East Central University, Ada, Oklahoma
MFA - Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas

Profile
Wingate has been actively involved in the Dallas/Ft. Worth art scene since moving to Dallas in 1989. He was involved with 500X Gallery for 2.5 years before branching off to start Gray Matters Gallery with a friend. For 14 years he operated Gray Matters Gallery and Red Room Books, which closed in 2005. He has been the Gallery Coordinator of East l West Galleries of the Department of Visual Arts at Texas Woman's University since June 2008. He also continues to curate shows at local and regional art spaces, exhibits his artwork, and is working on plans to open a printmaking workshop, Enoch Press @ Gray Matters Gallery, in Dallas, in the near future.

Artwork
Vance Wingate Website

Reevaluating earlier work incorporating symmetry and composition within the grid led to a reduced focus on manipulated images as a primary concern in my work. The ideas I am involved in are a shift from works grounded in found images (and less in formal concerns) to works developed using a grid based structure with self-imposed ‘rules’ regarding the placement of organizing points that guide structured, progressive changes in building images from an underlying skeleton to a specific concentration of lines. A reactive process of erasure, redrawing and overlay delineate trapezoid forms within the mass of line work, which ultimately become the final composition. Decisions on additional color, more deletions and orientation of the piece are made after following the ‘rules’ and process to the ultimate end.

Active surfaces and perceived space are created in the drawings through this process of accrued layering, selected removal of specific parts or addition of textures and layers in the form and background. I work toward developing a seductively uncomfortable optical experience, emphasizing visual and textural differences where the figure and ground are equally present.

This process, with a circumscribed structure and ‘rules’ to follow, reveal a multitude of choices and questions to investigate in developing artwork. I approach each piece trying to find the logic and essence of what can be done visually with each decision and in each step of the process.

 Composition #29[16 pts.] / 2010

 

 Composition #27 [8 pts.] / 2010

 

 Composition #26 [10 pts.] / 2010