Photograph by Kelsey Swann in 2020
About
Lives and works in the north suburbs 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 Chicago-land. She received her BFA in Art Education in 2004 from the University of Illinois Champaign – Urbana and her MFA in Painting from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia in 2011.
Her art has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is held in numerous private collections throughout the country. She has maintained a rigorous studio practice for over 20 years, and in reality even longer as her love for painting began in first grade.
She has been awarded artist residencies at Threewalls, Chicago, Bundanon Trust, in New South Wales, Australia, and Nida Art Colony in Lithuania. Veronica has spent years teaching at some of the top institutions in Illinois such as the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools as well as taking years off completely to focus on her art practice and projects. She has over nine years of teaching experience between the years of 2005-2018.
Since 2018, Veronica started a family, moved to San Diego in 2019 where she had two solo exhibitions. She moved back to Chicago-land in the summer of 2022 with her family. She worked as a freelance art consultant and production artist (see examples under Commissions and Design Work Tab) for commercial projects from 2022-2025 and is now currently focusing on her studio practice, family and freelance work.
Studio Visits and Collecting:
If you’d like to request a studio visit, or request video of a certain piece with more images, please reach out.
You can collect some works directly on ArtClvb, otherwise you can email for pricing and availability of any other works.
FIRST NEWSLETTER OF 2026.
Please read and subscribe to continue to receive similar shares, typically only once a month.
Artist Statement 2025/2026
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 on the walls and floor with circumstantial found materials and accumulated studio debris and used the hard copy photographs from the time in an end sculpture of cast cement bricks. The focus was on the changing installation yet, I still wanted to make a tangible, end artifact, holding the energy of that experience. In that particular 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, storage units, and moving homes a lot. I still think that work years ago encompasses a lot of what I have been making for the past 17 years with an interest in play, compositional choices, using materials available to me by circumstance, time, and sustaining a rigorous daily practice of making with the object (painting, sculpture, hybrid, whatever it is) being an artifact holding gesture, change, and histories of 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, such as my year long, daily coffee cup works. 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 with many themes of motherhood, guardians, ritual objects, and an emphasis on the action of creating. 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
SOCIALS: I am planning to not be posting 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 and my written thoughts about my work. If you do not already receive this newsletter please sign up. I am not deleting the Instagram page but will be using it more as a landing page to find my website, links and still connect with new followers. I’m happy to communicate by cell, email, responses to the newsletter, and still DMs in Instagram too. Thanks.
