Wendy Caldwell Maloney is a water media artist based in Buffalo, NY
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Photo by David R. Moog
Artist’s Statement
I am a water media artist producing abstract, representational, and intuitive works on paper and canvas. I use watercolor, gouache, acrylics, drawing materials, and collage to build texture and interest. It is the immediacy and versatility of these mediums that appeal to me; sweeping washes, bold brushstrokes, and exacting detail can all be executed without the interruption of prolonged drying time.
Humbled and awed by the natural world, I strive for images that have presence: subtle or brilliant color, a sense of power or calm, elegant simplicity or stunning complexity. My work is reverent, joyous, and experiential: as I paint, I become the surging wave, the saturated reds of autumn, the intricate surfaces of beach stones, the soaring crescendo of violins.
While working abstractly or intuitively, music becomes my partner. My brushstrokes speak to the sensation of motion and rhythm I feel as an athlete and a dancer, and the structural integrity of music is explored through the repetition of shapes. I aim to make visible the aliveness I see in the world and feel in my body.
An artist inspired by the natural world
Wendy Caldwell Maloney is a mixed-media artist awed by the staggering variety and detail in nature, and invigorated by the joys of movement, music and dance. She paints abstractly and intuitively on both paper and canvas, using water-media, collage, and a wide variety of drawing materials to build images with motion, texture and complexity. She works out of her home studio in Buffalo, NY.
A WORLD OF INSPIRATION
Her love for nature began during childhood summers on the Canadian shores of Lake Erie, and at summer camps in the Adirondacks. Studio art was a rich part of her upbringing at home and at school. After receiving a BFA in Art and Design from Alfred University, with concentrations in drawing, printmaking, and photography, she worked for ten years as a typographer, followed by two decades as a graphic designer and illustrator as sole proprietor of Current Design. She returned to the fine arts in 2002 studying transparent watercolor with renown Buffalo artist, Margaret M. Martin. Annual painting trips to the New England seacoast heightened her fascination with surf, coastal rock formations, and stones, and the natural calligraphy that emerged in the liquid and frenzied lines of the ocean’s tides.
In time, reverent, realistic watercolors gave way to a more experiential practice. It is now, not only what she sees that motivates her work, but also what she hears and thinks and feels. Fascination, experimentation, and pure joy are her companions; while painting, she becomes the surging waves, the saturated reds of autumn, the ecstasy of violins. As these sensations course through her body, she expresses them through line, color, pattern, and texture, and offers them to viewers with the possibility of a shared experience.
Her work is held in public and private collections in the United States, Canada, Italy, and Mexico. Select regional exhibition venues include: The Buffalo AKG Art Museum, the Burchfield Penney Art Center, The Kenan Center, Meibohm Fine Arts, Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, Hunt Art Gallery, and the Birge Mansion, and is represented in the corporate collections of Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Golisano Children’s Hospital, and Hospice Buffalo. She is a long time exhibitor at the Buffalo History Museum and the Junior League of Buffalo’s Decorator’s Show House.
Wendy is an exhibiting member of the Buffalo Society of Artists, a signature member of the Niagara Frontier Watercolor Society, and has taught watercolor workshops at the Burchfield Penney Art Center.