The Drawers - Wanda Lock    Commentary written by Julie Oakes

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Narrative?

Wanda Lock's work is ethereal yet grounded, playful and lively but contained. The work is whimsical with associations to the joy of pure abstraction but there is an underlying reference. It is a feminism that is inescapable and Lock seals the hints of a maternal perspective within a determined, firm association with the realm of children when she rules half of her page as if it was a school book and writes in the cursive hand of a child. The work is associative and she has forced the association with this addition of wobbly writing. The text, with the exaggerated curves of a nascent scribe, reveal the wonder of the act of writing while at the same time demonstrating the task of having to communicate with such a laborious method. Perhaps that is why the message is more evocative than precise. The voice is difficult to pin down. Is it a child who is telling us something or is it an adult clothing more sophisticated emotions?

Interpreting the visuals is influenced by the text and with the writing being so large, it is impossible to look at the work without reading it. When “running up hill to the green green grass” is the written statement and there is a happily colored blue sky and four attempts at humanization at the bottom of what could be a hill; when there's a balloon floating and a bouncy story book expectancy - it's an abrupt detour to read the title Searching for Casa Nova and then realize that this is an adult who is putting out the messages.

The visuals cannot be interpreted as truly naïve for they rise above the in adequate abilities of a child who is trying to depict (striving to make drawings that 'look like . . .'). The sunny work enters the intellectually complex coding of pure abstraction. More 'Cy Twombly' than innocent, Wanda Lock's work challenges while enhancing - similar to the profound dynamics between the upkeep and the blessings of raising children.

Copyright © 2006,  Headbones Gallery, The Drawers