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Founded in 1912, the Newport Art Museum is one of the oldest continuously operating and most highly regarded art museums and schools of its kind in the country.
The Newport Art Museum’s collection consists of approximately 3,000 works of art in a range of media including works on paper (prints, drawings, watercolors, and photographs), paintings, sculptures, decorative arts, installation works, and textiles and is expanding to include new media. Concentrated on American art and contemporary art, the Museum’s collection includes works of art from the 18th century to present.
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TRYPTIC ABSTRACTION, 2020, Oil on canvas, Courtesy of the Artist.
Visit Mark Wholey’s website Facebook: @markwholeyart
Hi My name is Mark Wholey and the work I am exhibiting at the Newport Biannual is called Triptych Abstraction.
I hope you are enjoying looking at this painting as much as I have watching it develop over several months. It was never intended to be what it is. When it was done I saw it afresh almost as you are seeing it now.
As you look at it what do YOU see?
A lot of energy. That is for sure. It is a very non-objective work. No hidden meanings or sophisticated passages to unearth. No clues.
But you can get into it and visually travel around. There are layers and you might find things and maybe create connections. But really, just enjoy it. It is something that is nothing. And I think that is it’s charm.
So how did it come about you might ask? So I’ll tell you,
Three small canvases were begun with no satisfactory images emerging, but butting them together showed promise. And because there was no objective in mind, anything goes. The painting really guided itself adding masks and spray paint intuitively. And the painting was finished by directing me to stop before I wrecked it.
I feel that the best an artwork can do is to live within the viewer to be recalled at some future time. I hope Tryptich Abstraction goes home within your memory. Thank you.