Chelsey Wood, Untitled Box Series 1, Oil on Panel, 72″ x 52″, 2010

As a figurative painter I am repeatedly confronted with the physical and psychological landscape of the female body. My understanding of my own body is influenced and constructed by the shifting social landscape of the female nude. Through self-portraiture I have questioned and personalized my relationship to this loaded history, placing my own body into its chronology and creating a collection of visual symbols aimed at expressing my own experience and observations.

Chelsey Wood, Untitled Box Series 4, oil on panel, 64″ x 44″, 2010

The formal narrative of the painting consists of the female nude navigating an environment of cramped wooden crates. The structures are located in a vacant scuffed up room that references a gallery space. For me the bodies within the boxes become art objects. The figures navigate the space within the boxes, both exploring their relationship to the environment and their relationship to each other. Spatially constricted they react both physically and psychologically. Their experiential condition is communicated through the bodies’ expression of color, tension and mark. The bodies are containers themselves, existing within containers, existing within containers, existing within containers and onwards.

Chelsey Wood, Untitled Box Series 2, oil on panel, 64″ x 44″, 2010

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Chelsey Tyler Wood has spent the last year hopping from residency to residency (Prairie Art Center, Santa Fe Art Institute) and teaching at the University of South Dakota. Originally a native of Chicago, she earned her BFA from Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (2004) and her MFA for Tufts University/School of the Museum of Fine Arts (2011). Chelsey has had a solo exhibition at Montserrat College of Art (Beverly, MA) and  a recent two person exhibition at the Foster White Gallery (Seattle, WA). You might have caught glimpses of her work in the pages of Juxtapoz Magazine or on the immensely popular website, ARTISTADAY.

Chelsey Wood, Box Drawing 1, graphite on paper, 7″ x 5″, 2010