Bart
Soutendijk
My wire wall art is relief sculpture -- some of the sculpture’s components overlap. The art is not flat like a print, or painting. Shadows change differently with the light’s source and angle.
Working with wire allows me more opportunities to make creative changes to the image: first when I make the drawing on a computer, then when I bend the wire by hand, and again when I weld the wire and when I mount the sculpture on a wall. As time permits, I study the final work and make adjustments to it by bending the wire, cutting out segments, or adding new ones. Lines that project unevenly from the wall convey a very different feeling than flat images that are painted on the wall or are framed prints on paper or canvas.
When I first began to work in wire, it seemed like a really great way to make larger drawings on the wall without stretching yards of canvas or framing big plywood panels. Then came the shadows and the way the steel bent – soft not hard- and how the images took on a personality that only this medium made possible. The softness of the steel and how it agrees to bend helps me to strip away lines that aren’t required to convey the image. It is also an important part of the creation process- the medium dictates the feel of the piece. This is why I think the style or feel from piece to piece is fundamentally different even when it’s the same subject.
I learned at an early age the value of family and relationships. I think my preference for capturing people being human and creating images that represent everyday life is my way of expressing what’s most important in life.
I know my art may seem too simple to express a deeper meaning – yet in today's world that’s exactly it – it’s “the simpler things” in life that we find we cherish when our world looks like it is coming apart. All of a sudden - holding someone’s hand takes on a new meaning, taking a bath, watching people at work and kids at play, just having fun and laughing or remembering the simpler things we enjoyed in our youth now becomes our joy.
The ideas behind the images I draw come from photographs. I see myself as an image collector. My intention is to present the feel of an image in its simplest form and create a subtle change in perception involving the viewer in the art. Wire helps to do that. If it takes an effort to understand a sculpture you’re closer to the art. When you look at one of my sculptures you see a piece of wire, at least for an instant, then it becomes a face or an animal and you feel as though you discovered something. It’s the subtle change in perception that involves you in the art.. If my art produces emotion – delight in a sense of discovery, the happiness of familiarity, a smile, or a chuckle - then I’ve accomplished what I want to do for people viewing my art. People viewing my art have said that the subjects remind them of a special place or time, an event or a person. They reflect life.