Interview
Wendy Roylance Baugh
Wendy embraces adventure and has worked and lived around the world: New York, London, SW France and Kenya. Every location has inspired her work and continues to shape her creative process. As she develops a relationship with each place: the history, the people, the culture and absorbs the visual stimulus, the bodies of work she creates reflect a personal response to these experiences. Her art career follows working in fashion and graphics in New York and London, so her work is influenced by colour, texture and line. She is a mixed-media artist of the anthropology of wine, landscapes and figures.
She favours oils, papers and mark-making using a wide variety of drawing tools. Her work is multi-layered, each layer incorporating individual meaning and expression. Wendy is an international artist at Arts et Lettres de France. She received the Denis Diderot Award for Artist in Residence at Chateau Orquevaux 2020. She has exhibited since 1996. In 2018 and 2019, she had sell-out exhibitions on the Anthropology of Bordeaux and Burgundy wine respectively at Cult Wine, global wine investment company. She has a BA (Fashion Institute of Technology, New York) and a MA in the expressive arts (Canterbury). Wendy has exhibited in London, the home counties, France and Kenya and is commissioned around the world.
What is your background and how did you start your journey in the art world?
“I’ve always loved to express myself be it through drawing, painting, dancing contemporary ballet or writing. I studied fashion and graphics at the Fashion Institute of New York, working on magazines and as a fashion director for a leading corporation working with fabrics, design, colour and illustration. I completed my MA in the expressive arts at Canterbury UK, when my children were young and focused on visual art, becoming a professional artist. My work developed from this immersion in the world of fashion loving colour line texture and has since flourished from living and working around the world: France, UK, USA, Japan and Kenya. I build a relationship with each place – its people their culture, history and landscapes – and reflect a personal response to these experiences. As I develop my work, I am moving towards abstraction relying on the elements of art to convey my intetnions. I have been accepted for residencies in France, Italy and Japan with each place igniting a desire to experiment with new combinations of materials, mark and exploring new concepts.
I share my passion through offering art holidays and retreats in France, Italy, Japan and Kenya, giving time and space for individuals to continue their own creative journey.”
What inspires you?
“I am inspired by the ethereal quality of change in the world - figures moving through time and space leaving their impression upon the world; or the transformation of season, weather, growth and decay. I am interested in nature and mankind working together, the chaos and the harmony. Nature leaves its mark; I leave my mark through my work. Living in France, I am surrounded by vines and a large body of my work concerns all aspects of oenology: the soils, the weather, the seasons of the vines, the work of the land and sustaining this extraordinary product over hundreds of years.”
What themes do you pursue? Is there an underlying message in your work?
“Transience and fragility are my two key themes. Whatever I am painting, I trust my marks will reflect the dichotomy of harmony and turmoil and our place within the world.”
How would you describe your work?
“I am a mixed media artist working mainly in oils, incorporating papers and a variety of mark-making media such as charcoal, pencil, pastel, raw pigments. My process enables me to create multiple layers within which I place image, texture or line to create aspects of fleeting life. Using a variety of tools I scrape back or scratch into the layers to reveal glimpses of what lies beneath. I often incorporate soils and sand, papers and maps, and found materials from the places where I work which adds an element of being rooted at that one moment. As I build and combine materials, there is a dynamic between me as the artist and the emerging work, which reinforces a sense of place within the ever-changing world.”
Which artists influence you most?
“I am constantly inspired by artists – sometimes for their work and sometimes for their character which drives their place within the story of creating art. I am particularly drawn to contemporary artists who find fresh and innovative ways to depict the world in which they live. Currently, I am looking at contemporary African artists eg John David Knot who explores migration and the human condition. I admire Tracy Emin for the raw, challenging immediacy, and sometimes humour, in her incredible body of work. I love Joan Eardley’ expressive and powerful paintings and how she creates a sense of place.”
“Abstraction plays a key part in my work. My current focus is building from my two collections on the anthropology of wine, with multiple layers including soil from the region, maps, labels and descriptors of terroir, nose and taste reflect the complexity of wine.”
What is your creative process like?
“I am passionate about my sketchbook and carry one everywhere I go. It is a place to record visual stimuli, - colour shape light, jot down ideas, record what I see. All my work emerges from these many pages. I spend much time contemplating the collection I plan to create; what I want to portray and how I want it to develop. However, once I begin painting, it becomes an intuitive and organic process. I allow the work takes on a lifeforce of its own; I feel I work in harmony with the emerging piece. I work on a few canvasses at a time, moving from one to another. Returning to a canvas with fresh eyes leads me to progress the work with multiple layers.”
What is an artist’s role in society and how do you see that evolving?
“I believe that an artist’s role is to reflect the world around them; to communicate a sense of truth, to convey a message or provoke thought. I think art can serve to bring harmony to our fragmented world by finding a shared understanding. Perhaps above all it is to offer a moment in time, to be still, reflect and surrender oneself in order to understand ourself better.”
Have you had any noteworthy exhibitions you'd like to share?
“I have a show during the international jazz festival in SW France at La Chapelle de la Croix. My recent exhibitions include: Chateau Segur, Bordeaux (2023); ALF Cauderan, Bordeaux (2023); ALF, Hourtin Bordeaux (2023); among others.”
