Growing up in the wilds of Wisconsin, artist Gretchen Wagoner spent most of her time exploring the dense forest that surrounded her house… The strange world that existed just meters away from her bedroom window fascinated her beyond reason…

“It was the contradictions that captivated me”, she says. “The
juxtaposition of dancing shadows with fractured patterns of light, the
long dead silences broken by violent thrashing sounds (possibly made by a small woodland inhabitant scurrying to one of the endless dark corners)… It made me anxious, but it also was comforting”

It's these very same contradictions and combinations that embody her work today. Trained at the Minneapolis College of Art & Design, (where she earned her degree in fine arts), she specializes in painting and collage and her projects employ a deft mixture of these two disciplines.

Her artwork reflects the appreciation she has of the surroundings of her childhood… Nature and its many dualities are woven into its themes like the branches in a robin’s nest.

Primarily gouache paint, collage and resin on wood panels, the pieces themselves have an organic look to them, as if they were hewn directly from life in one fell swoop rather than meticulously crafted, which was indeed the case… A story lives in every brushstroke… in every scene, but it is one that is constructed in the viewer’s heart.
Gretchen is currently based in Long Island City, after a New York Studio Loft scholarship brought her east to work independently on her art some ten years ago.