Kent Wood, submitted artwork
Kent Wood
Painting
Albuquerque, NM, USA
Kent Wood American (b.1953) Kent Wood is a contemporary artist who currently is reimagining the iconography of skulls through a multidisciplinary approach by juxtaposing imaginative and dramatic elements from personal experience and art history to contemporary issues. A degree in Bio-medical photography and scientific illustration led to a diverse career from a LIFE magazine cover, medical and animal sculptures, architectural models, zoo, museum and theme park exhibits and installations to authoring a book. He has exhibited and been published world wide.
Works
Kent Wood, submitted artwork
Surrealism just passed its centennial and I am a surrealist reimagining the iconography of skulls. My art career began in 5th grade, but after moving to New Mexico in 1967 Georgia O”Keefe’s paintings were among the first actual paintings I remember seeing in person. My father was an assistant medical examiner. It is no wonder that her surreal use of bones made an impression upon me. Her canvases stunned me for they were so unlike the medical illustrations I knew, they were Art and I gravitated to them. By happenstance I became a biomedical photographer and scientific illustrator. In the OR I once photographed brain surgery where a patient’s skull was opened exposing a vulnerable brain that hovered between life and death. That experience left me with a profound respect and reverence for the nobility of a skull as it holds a hunk of gray matter that is the essence of a living being. Skulls are a powerful motif for the precarious times we live in and reflect on our vulnerabilities. Skulls eerily tie us to the uncertainty we face yet they can also be a trophy, a lasting tribute to life’s adversity. They carry with them a narrative, the entropy of life. Suspending or floating a skull as an illusion alludes to and intensifies its subjective powers while its visage eludes a specific meaning. The empty shell of a skull speaks of the mind it once held and the life it once lived, but leaves us guessing as to the nature of the beast.
