Redd Walitzki
Bloom, oil and mixed-media on laser-cut acrylic panel, 18″ x 24″, 2017
Snowblind, oil and mixed-media on laser-cut acrylic panel, 34″ x 44″, 2017
Snowblind (Detail)
Endanleg osk (“The Final Wish”), oil and mixed-media on laser-cut acrylic panel, 18″ x 24″, 2017
The Butterfly Catcher, oil and mixed-media on laser-cut acrylic panel, 30″ x 40″, 2017
The Butterfly Catcher (Detail)
Frozen Saga, oil and mixed-media on laser-cut acrylic panel, 30″ x 40″, 2017
Frozen Saga (Detail)
The Stranger, oil and mixed-media on laser-cut acrylic panel, 18″ x 24″, 2017
Artist Statement
The body of work shown above, “Stranger Than Earth”, is a requiem to an earth transformed by climate change: there is no going back to the world we used to know but perhaps we can create a new world filled with alien beauty.
The explorers I depict in my paintings are a reflection of their environment—unknowable and also entering unknown spaces. Investigating this theme, I give the romantic aesthetic of high-fashion a science-fiction edge.
Creating the series involved an epic journey to capture the initial reference imagery, requiring me to travel to locations awe-inspiring in their natural wonder but also reshaped by humans. The resulting paintings depict the balance between a world that is transforming and a world that is transforming us. Despite the apocalyptic danger inherent in the process, there exists the possibility of hope, if we can cultivate strange new environments with which to coexist.
My use of media — combining traditional materials such as watercolor and oil paint with new techniques such as laser-cut acrylic panels — mirrors this notion. The process is risky and, as is the case when we tamper with the external world, could result in destruction of the piece I’m creating but if I’m successful, it can produce a new, hybrid strain of beauty.
About the Artist
Redd Walitzki, originally from Burghausen, Germany, is a Seattle-based contemporary artist. She creates detailed mixed-media paintings by combining watercolor, acrylic, and oil glazes on laser-cut canvases. Influenced by the rococo ornamentation of her native Bavaria, Redd Walitzki’s paintings are primarily figurative, most often depicting the female form and detailed natural elements. They focus on the balance between the inevitable entropy of nature and the unattainable beauty invented with high-fashion and technology.
Passionate about advancing the creative process through experimentation, Redd Walitzki works with combinations of artistic media, explores new technologies, and burns things with lasers! Her earliest memories are of painting the kitchen table with her grandfather, pulling flowers and foxes out of bright splashes of pigment.
While pursuing a career as an artist, Redd Walitzki completed a bachelor of fine arts degree, with a concentration in painting, at Cornish College of the Arts. These days Redd can be found in her studio working on science podcasts, raising various moths and mantises, collaborating with her art family on otherworldly tea parties, or chasing down on her scooter her next strange adventure.
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