WSG Gallery is pleased to present
Michelle A. Hegyi
wild skies
April 26 - June 3, 2023
An opening reception for the artist will be held at the gallery
Friday May 5, 2023, 5-7 pm,
during Ann Arbor’s Gallery Art Hop
All are invited to the opening reception, which is free and open to the public.
Masks appreciated.
wild skies, no. 1 | ©2023 by Michelle A. Hegyi | pigment ink on rag paper | 28”h x36.5”w
wild skies, no. 4 | ©2023 by Michelle A. Hegyi | pigment ink on rag paper | 32”h x 32”w
of place (west), no. 17 | ©2023 by Michelle A. Hegyi | pigment ink on rag paper | 36.5”h x 28”w
wild skies, no. 2 | ©2023 by Michelle A. Hegyi | pigment ink on rag paper | 32”h x 32”w
Artist Statement:
I never know what a piece will look like before I begin. Sometimes I start with a blank slate, other times with bits of photos here and there of things around me.
The most fun part is seeing what evolves as each mark inspires another or sometimes requires taking something away.
As always I paint by hand on the computer with a pressure-sensitive tablet and then print the work myself on heavyweight cotton rag paper to be sure to get the colors right. A couple of the pieces in this show were experiments in painting using updated software. For these pieces the brushstrokes flowed so smoothly and felt so natural that I could get lost in the piece, everything just flowed.
I especially love color and line. The colors and the shapes in my work evolve into the abstract from things I see around me, from the gorgeous combination of colors in my granddaughter’s dresses to the new cloud formations inspiring me to make a piece with all over ‘floating’ colors.
Most of my pieces in this show were created while in the Bay Area of California, during one of the worst winters in decades.
Even though a lot of my work is abstract, it is mostly inspired by the landscape. My favorite part of each day is taking a walk in nature — I revel in the slow looking at the little things that surprise and delight me: colors, shapes, lines, light and shadows each catch my eye. How beautiful it is when a gentle breeze blows the blossoms off the trees as they scatter along the ground or as they float slowly down while flickering in the sunlight. But things are not always as they seem. Many times this winter the skies became wilder with high winds and torrential rain. This has added a new dimension to my relationship with trees. How something so beautiful and awe inspiring can now also be life-threatening. Even on a windless day, the shallow roots of the redwoods and the eucalyptus become saturated with water, and the tallest trees can fall.
In the process of making wild skies, no. 1, I felt the piece needed something more (which is what usually happens as I go through many iterations of each of my pieces!). It definitely needed some other colors, and I felt like it needed some yellow-orange and a touch of salmon. I absolutely needed to add some linear elements to make it complete. Having recently learned about the Japanese art of Kintsugi, ie, the repair of broken pottery by using gold to put the pieces back together (built on the idea that in embracing flaws and imperfections, you can create an even stronger, more beautiful piece) led me to paint the gold line through the “cloud” shape in the piece — in my hope that humanity will take seriously the repairing of the climate so we might soon bring the climate back to the way it used to be, or to aspire to an even better state than it was in before. — Michelle A. Hegyi