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 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 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 to focus on her art practice and projects. She has over nine years of teaching experience between the years of 2005-2018.
Veronica moved to San Diego in the summer of 2019 where she had two solo exhibitions. She moved back to Chicago-land in the summer of 2022 with her family and works in her home studio north of Chicago.
Statement 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
