Adam Winnie

My works developed through open narratives which take existent features of our inevitable conflicts as their central focus. Those private/public, internal/external conflicts are born through coping with an absurd and tragic existence whose true meaning will forever escape our grasp. They embody the contradictory state of relationships between our inner worlds, our outer selves and the quagmire of society as a whole.

The protagonists of these often large-scale works, visually define, through personal experience and social precedence, the inescapability of our "essential illness". This phrase, coined by William Golding in The Lord of the Flies, refers to fear, the driving force behind so many of our actions (or inactions). In these works there are no beginnings or endings, no solutions are offered and no utopia is alluded to. Faced with only the precipice, the viewer is asked to complete the work. Stimulating the mechanics of self as other, I use my own figure as the protagonist in hopes of peeking through the fence of private experience.

In my studio practice, I strive to balance conceptual rigor with aesthetic impact while maintaining a high level of realism and craftsmanship. For me, making art is a personal form of metaphysical inquiry which puts the gravity of life on a human scale. The results are the distillation of experiences, research, and planning entangled within relatable allegories and narratives.