Wanda Lock

“In a Room Without You” – mixed media

“When You Come To Visit” – mixed media

Canada

“When I was about nine years old my brother found my diary and read it. OMG! It was horrific…I didn’t know what to do. Embarrassed, I wanted to slip away into nothingness. My diary writing days were officially over but my need to record and decipher the world around me was still strong and relentless.

And so I decided to draw. These beginning drawings were abstract, unrecognizable scribbles that only I could decode; a perfect way to fulfill my need to chronicle my life and the world around me. I continued this practice through my teens, into art school and on through my twenties.

In 2001 I stopped drawing pictures about my musings on life and took on a documentary role, using the people and events in my community as subject. An interaction at the cafe, a conversation at the soccer field, a quick hello in a parking lot are taken back to the studio and used as a premise for a new work. My drawings are not about me, my drawings are about you..

Drawing is an important aspect in achieving my artistic vision. The drawings I create tend to be open-ended, continuous and evolving. These documents of unresolved reality become the templates for my future explorations in painting, which themselves become a compilation, displaying both figurative and landscape elements.”

Wanda Lock was born in Oliver, British Columbia in 1969. In 1989 she enrolled into the Fine Arts Diploma program at Okanagan College before transferring to Emily Carr College of Art & Design where she graduated in 1992 with a studio major in painting. Lock returned to the Okanagan in 1992, and since then she has had numerous exhibitions throughout the Okanagan. Wanda was the manager of Opus Framing and Art Supplies in Kelowna from 1995 to 2006 and has taught art classes and workshops at the Kelowna Art Gallery. According to her significant other, Wanda watches too many coming of age movies. She is also known to Pearl Jam and even a bit of Soundgarden while working in her studio. She is not sure what her fondness of grunge music or teenage angst movies have in common with her current body of work but she is convinced that all will become clear in good time.

Lock employs a variety of mediums such as graphite, oil, pastel and acrylic on paper, board and canvas, often combining the two mediums. Her works are inspired by everyday objects, typically things found 'around the house'. Interiors, small animals and insects are familiar subjects in her pieces. Although she focuses on simple and mundane objects, her paintings and drawings appear far from lifelike; more symbolic renderings, than realistic. Her last exhibition at the Vernon Art Gallery earlier this year, The Year We Disappeared, continues her focus on small, everyday occurrences and 'things', through works varying in size and method. This exhibition looks into Wanda's own experiences. Its “about books read, movies seen and stories told. it's about conversations had over morning coffee, late-night studio visits, and brief encounters with those who slip in and out of our lives. The Year We Disappeared is about the summer I turned 50.”

For more information about the artist, check out: wandalockart.com