Martin Wittfooth | "Symbolic Resonance : Utilizing the Power of Visual Allegory"
This webinar is past the live streaming date, but the archived video is still available for purchase on this page.
Instructor: Martin Wittfooth
Date + Time: Wednesday, July 6th @ 5pm PST / 8pm EST
Format: Zoom Webinar (45 Min Discussion and Lecture + 30 Min Ask Them Anything)
Other Info: All webinar discussions will be archived for viewing at a later date.
Price: $25
Instructor's Bio:
Martin Wittfooth was born in Toronto, Canada in 1981 and works in two studios in Kingston, New York, and Savannah, Georgia. He earned his MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 2008. Wittfooth’s work has been exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide, including the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Akron Art Museum in Ohio, and La Halle Saint-Pierre in Paris, with solo exhibitions in New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Copenhagen. His paintings have also appeared in numerous publications, including Juxtapoz, The New York Times Art Review, and Vice, and cover features in New American Paintings, Hi-Fructose, Chronogram, and American Artist Magazine.
Wittfooth’s paintings, drawings, installations, and sculptural works investigate themes of the intersection and clash of industry and nature, and the human influence on the environment. Many of his works explore the theme of shamanism - rituals and practices as old as our species - through which we have attempted to dialogue with nature: the nature outside of ourselves and the nature within. His creative language uses the combination of allegory and symbolism to convey visual narratives.
Martin Wittfooth is represented by Gallery Poulsen in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Webinar Description:
Composing visually strong, symbolically resonant and connective, and personally meaningful images with wide-reaching impact has always been an enigmatic challenge for artists. This webinar will offer one painter’s approach to grappling with this problem, and the various methods, practices, and tools that he uses to do so. Martin Wittfooth will be presenting historical examples of imaginary, narrative realism, and allegorical art and why these images work, and considerations those artists have made in composing their images that might illuminate aspects of our own approaches to image-making to make them stronger, and more effective at translating our own vision to canvas, paper, clay, or whatever our medium of choice might be. Wittfooth will show and discuss his own approach to creating his art, from ideation through sketching and creating color studies, how he sources and creates dynamic reference imagery to aid in painting, to the steps involved in placing the last brush-stroke on a completed painting. We will also discuss how learning new tools of reference-creation - digital sculpting - that have largely replaced the traditional painter’s techniques of creating physical maquettes to paint from, have opened doors in his artistic practice to envisioning and realizing three-dimensional sculptural works and installation projects.
Who Is The Webinar For?
This webinar is open to artists (and more generally, to anyone interested in the process of art-making) of all experience levels and mediums.
Why Is This Webinar Being Offered?
The composition and structure of classical paintings endures in the collective psyche for a reason - we, as viewer or creator, or both - continue to be attracted to images from the past that convey certain deliberate but often subtle considerations to hold our eye, and to invite us in for contemplation and a dialogue. This webinar will discuss how these enduring methods may be translated to modern-day narratives and allegories that speak of our current condition, whether personal or more broadly objective, and how the artist may process and distill these topics into compelling artworks.