Artists
Chris Woods
Dreamland
THE Cascade 
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Artists
Chris Woods
Dreamland
THE Cascade |
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| Profiles from my left shoe:
Chris Woods, artist
The Cascade
by Kevin Trowbridge One of my philosophies in life is that I can learn one helpful clue to understanding my own life from every person that I meet. Considering my philosophy, why not pursue the understanding of a successful artist? I have met Chris Woods several times over the course of the last few years because of his current success in the Vancouver art scene and his longtime friendship with Dr. Rory Wallace, head of UCFV's Visual Arts Department. This friendship began more than ten years ago when Woods himself was at the University College of the Fraser Valley. At the time of his schooling, Woods "did not hold high regard for elements of the program." Today, the philosophy of the program has drastically changed to create an interdisciplinary program which allows students to find their own voice. Woods own voice, or direction, was recognized when Rory Wallace encouraged the artist to make a submission to Artropolis '90. Woods' series, called So Much Less Divine, was one of fifty chosen out of five-hundred submissions. His work stood out from the masses for their technical achievements, classical references, and grandiose size. This attracted the attention of Diane Farris, a Vancouver curator and gallery owner. Prior to Artropolis, Woods had sent a resume and slides to her, but was declined. About six months after Artropolis '90, Woods was acquired by the Diane Farris Gallery, which has represented him ever since. Woods' images begin on a conceptual basis. He develops sketches from images in his mind and continues to refine them. He then gathers up his friends and heads to a chosen site to shoot photographs. Woods relates that this initial process is the most creative and enjoyable part of his work, in comparison to his mechanical style of painting. According to Woods: "By the time you've got the canvas on the easel . . . there really aren't many decisions left to make. It's just sort of filling in the spaces." When asked why he chooses the medium of painting over photography, he replied, "I like the challenge . . . of making things look real. That brings a sort of satisfaction." He also quoted photographer David Hockney: "Photography is just a flash, an instant in time and you get no [sense] of time when you look at a photograph; it is very frozen. But when you look at a painting, even if it's done from a single photographic image, it's something that has linear time in it because it took the artist a certain amount of time to do it rather than an instant. You can only look at a photograph so long before your eye tends to wander and lose interest, but a painting seems to keep your eye going because you know there's an element of creativity in it". It seems that Woods misses the element of spontaneity in the recent development of his works. In the past, the one element he enjoyed the most was just getting an idea and having his friends showing up wearing whatever they wanted. They would then sneak into such places like Save-On-Foods to shoot images like Cola Wars. He described to me how "with McTopia there was a lot less spontaneity in terms of costuming, and setting, and posing and such." Woods felt that his last show, McTopia, was "the pinnacle of [his] fast food period" and that he has now "[moved] into the world of tackling the realm of advertising." Woods has been looking at ad campaigns from the Gap and Tommy Hilfiger. Print ads have become his primary interest over the last few months. Commenting on his current work he said, "A lot of the ideas I was coming up with for finished paintings....ended up not having a lot of people in them and....that might be too much of a radical departure for me." He has decided to pursue a series of drawings and sketches from readily available magazine publications. These drawings seem to be an art-for- art's-sake approach for the artist. Woods explained how as a young artist drawing was his chosen medium. He feels that drawing is "where [he found his] sea legs," as it were, to become an artist. Woods plans to "show about a dozen drawings independently of what will eventually show at the Diane Farris Gallery" because he said that "frankly [his] resume needs a bit of padding in that regard." He said, "Most of my solo shows have been at the Diane Farris Gallery." As I discussed with Woods his hopes for future showings, he was most excited about showing these drawings at local universities such as SFU, UBC, or even the University College of the Fraser Valley. As to the future, he expresses interest in showing more in Eastern Canada and the United States. After this lengthy interview discussing his past work, influences, current concepts, and future hopes, I still did not have a full grasp on the level on which Woods is trying to make comment. His paintings can be taken as humorous and light-hearted, while the imagery he uses contains obvious bias and cynicism. His reaction to my uncertainties was very down to earth. He said, "my intention is not to be a social realist.... I like to think that I'm as neutral as possible." I questioned this claim of neutrality. Woods gave me an example of how he feels that he has achieved objectivity. If the viewer "doesn't believe in advertising, they'll see my images as anti-advertising. Other people that are in the industry [may believe that it is pro advertising.]" For example, "I had a piece bought by the people at Subway. They thought that I was highlighting Subway and it was all rah, rah, rah." I believe that the reasoning for his next body of work stems from his statement: "My experiences in life are that generally things are neitherblack nor white." "Advertising certainly serves valuable functions, but in some ways it does not. I guess it's that old adage of moderation is the key, and advertising goes over the top." In his upcoming body of work, Woods plans to explore many aspects of advertising, again desiring to become a "general practitioner," unlike the specialist work of McTopia. Upon exhaustion of the general theme of advertising, he plans to tighten his focus even more, possibly billboards, television or magazine ads. As we looked through his sketchbook, I was able to view his ideas in progress. Some of these future concepts included further use of carpentry, installation, and multimedia to create virtual billboards and six-foot fold out magazine ads. One current drawing, which he was working on at the time of the interview, was a collage of eight different Gap ads. I questioned whether he felt that working from magazine ads was impersonal. He agreed and said, "I'm sort of cheating myself because I'm cutting out so many steps that I enjoy working with and I like to work with the people I know. I think that's an element that gives my painting a little bit more of an original take on things." When I first walked into Woods' studio, I saw a painting of four characters in the Millennium Falcon, but it wasn't until the end that I was able to ask him who his favourite Star Wars character was. This is a question that I ask as the conclusion to every one of my interviews. It was a hard question for him to answer because he said that he was and still is a Star Wars fanatic, but he eventually chose Han Solo as his childhood favourite. Woods created this painting as an album cover for a local band called Darkest of the Hillside Thickets for the album, Cthulu Strikes Back. The four band members were superimposed as the crew of the Millennium Falcon. The cover art was featured in Star Wars Insider Magazine, voted the third best Star Wars influenced album cover by the editors of the magazine. Of all the achievements he's had over the years, being featured in Adbusters and Saturday Night Magazine, Woods said that he was most exited about beinga part of Star Wars history. |
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