Recent Artist Statements

I believe change and transformation are some of the few certainties in life. Nothing is stagnant. Over the years I have investigated works that were based on continual, moving installations of parts. One large example was the work created at Threewalls, Chicago in 2012 over the course of a month living in the gallery. I documented my own daily compositional play with found materials and accumulated studio debris I had brought with me, with the blank gallery as my canvas and used the hard copy photographs from that time in an end sculpture. The focus was on the changing installation yet, I still wanted to make a tangible, end artifact. In that particular installation piece, I cast cement bricks with the photographs I had taken of all of the daily changes. I no longer have those bricks because they became too heavy to continue to store and move around with me as I went through life, changing studios and storage units, and moving a lot. I still think that work years ago encompasses a lot of what I have been making for years with an interest in play, compositional choices, using materials available to me by circumstance, time, and a daily practice of making with the object being an artifact holding gesture, change, and associations with materials.

Many times my work ends up being these objects of change. Some of which undergo transformation numerous times over years, or decades. Other times I crave starting fresh, without history. These works are many times simpler. My practice has fluctuated between the continual revision and alterations of works past, and starting forward on new paths. The language stays the same, the amount of material history in each one changes, but they all embed my personal history and artistic vocabulary. 

-Veronica Woodward, Nov 2025

My work is heavily rooted in highlighting the human hand and gesture, elevating unwanted or menial objects, and references the traditions of painting. 

My objects many times serve as archeological finds of my personal life as I incorporate found materials such as my kids’ sketchbooks, torn up parts of my paintings, to an entire box of wooden cabinet samples a builder friend left for me on my porch one day. I reappropriate these objects from my own experiences and focus on embedding the physical gesture and leaving my mark on them.  In the case of my recent piece, "The Inadequacies and Power of the Painterly Gesture," I do so without adding any paint and work with my found palette.  In a world of AI and digital realms, I believe more than ever in the human touch. I also like to bend the rules with the basic components of painting and continually play on the line between image and object, fluctuating between series, formats, and primary materials. Many of my sculptures are made of found objects and the basic components of a traditional painting: wooden stretcher keys, picture hanging wire, canvas, and paint.

I am forever intrigued by the painterly gesture (with it’s inadequacies, failings and power), the solid grid, and how to make decisive moves to push and pull between these elements. I think about play, moments of simplification, and the continual act of processing experiences by transforming materials in my path.

-Veronica Woodward, early 2025

I am planning to remove myself from being active on Instagram in 2026 and move towards a simple, once a month newsletter, sharing pictures of works in process, studio views, final works, upcoming shows etc. If you do not already receive this newsletter please sign up above. I am not deleting the Instagram page but using it more as a landing page to find my website etc. Thank you for continuing to follow along, just in a different format. Happy to communicate by cell, email, responses to the newsletter etc.