Veronica Bruce Woodward
About
American b. 1982.
Lives and works north of Chicago.
Education:
MFA in Painting University of the Arts, 2011
BFA in Art Education, 2004
Veronica Bruce Woodward is an interdisciplinary artist based in the north suburbs of Chicago. She received her BFA in Art Education in 2004 from the University of Illinois Champaign – Urbana. She taught high school art full time from 2005-2011. In 2011 she received her Master of Fine Arts in Painting from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. She has been awarded artist residencies at Threewalls, Chicago, Bundanon Trust, in New South Wales, Australia, and Nida Art Colony in Lithuania. Woodward has exhibited her work in Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Philadelphia, San Diego, and the UK. Veronica has spent years teaching at some of the top institutions in Illinois such as the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, John Hersey High School and the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools as well as taking years off to focus on her art practice and projects. She has over nine years of teaching experience from 2005-2018. Veronica moved to San Diego in the summer of 2019 with her husband and newly born first son, where she had two solo exhibitions (Sparks Gallery and Encinitas City Hall) as well as having work included in a group exhibition in Encinitas. She also welcomed her second son in 2020 while in California. She moved back to Chicago-land with her family in the summer of 2022. She focuses on her artwork, raising her children, and working as a freelance art consultant sourcing art packages for commercial and private projects.
Statement 2025
I build relic-like wall sculptures that pay homage to my process of making art and I make paintings with basic architectural references and the painterly gesture. I believe the process of painting can thematically parallel the navigation of human relationships. 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 oil paintings from years prior, to items from neighbors before moving, to objects found in my alley, to an entire box of maple cabinet samples from a builder friend. I also like to bend the rules with the basic components of painting and continually play on the line between image and object (painting and sculpture), fluctuating between series, formats, and primary materials. My titles many times reference navigating relationships and my roles such as mother, wife, artist and individual with series titled MOTHER, works titled “Negotiations,” and “Playing Field,” for example. Many of my sculptures are composed of the basic components of a traditional painting with wooden stretcher keys, picture hanging wire and either canvas or linen, which is sometimes painted and sometimes rolled into beads with pulled canvas strings holding them together.
Upon closer inspection my works reveal "the failings of the grid” as squares are imperfectly cut with scissors and sides skew, or imperfections of the hand show up in the edges when painted. The painterly gesture is also becoming more and more simplified and highlighted in it’s intentionality in recent works.
In my work, 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
