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Seller Lets Loose

02/29/2012

ANGELIC GIRL is among the recent digital collages Seller is showing at Nestor Gallery.

When Assistant Professor Wendy Seller 75 AE began experimenting with art and design software a couple of years ago, she didn’t realize it would lead her to paint and create her own work in a radically different way. As a neosurrealist painter, she had been committed to working in oil – using a brush and canvas. However, her process took an unforeseen turn that she was eager to fully explore and refine during her recent sabbatical from RISD. 

Seller began digitally manipulating scanned images of her paintings, playing around in Illustrator to create entirely new hybrid compositions. Before long, she was combining collaged elements of her paintings with art historical references and scanned images of three-dimensional objects from nature. 

“I began dissecting, recomposing, analyzing and manipulating past and current works,” Seller explains. “I discovered a new way of working that was not only liberating, but pure play!” Now, she says, she “moves back and forth fluidly between the computer and direct painting” – a process that allows for “perpetual change.” 

Seller’s creative explorations resulted in a new series of work that’s currently on view in Letting Loose: Digital Collages. The solo show continues through March 6 at Milton Academy’s Nesto Gallery in Milton, MA.   

“Ms. Seller’s work is based on assembling fragments of historical art paintings and reconfiguring them,” says art faculty member and Nesto Gallery Director Anne Neely. “In discovering parts of paintings, she takes them out of their setting and creates new meaning for them in more contemporary ways.”


related links:
Wendy Seller’s website