Still Life Paintings, Artist's Statement, Resume, Contact
When he was three years old, Chicago area architect and artist Chad Wooters was fascinated by the illustrations of an old high school geometry book. Perhaps this explains his painting's sensitive treatment of spatial relationships. The humble objects in his paintings display a kind of architectural intuition that even the artist finds difficult to explain.
"A couple of years ago, I was showing a friend some of my still life paintings. We were at that moment, two artists practicing in parallel worlds. At the time, he was getting his Masters of Fine Arts at Buffalo State and was deeply immersed in conceptual art theories. At that time I had a more traditional approach; I painted what I saw. We discussed technique for a while, then he asked me a question that I've pondered a lot since then. He asked, 'Why these objects?' I replied that I simply paint what's around me, which is just as true today as it was then."
Flowers-in-a-vase and fruit-in-a-bowl don't interest Wooters much. "Power tools, caulk guns, cardboard boxes, and tape rolls are close at hand," he says, "so it's only natural for those things to find their way into my paintings." Wooters stresses that assembling a reference model is the most important part of his design process. According to the artist, it takes him about two or three days of trial and error before he's satisfied with his model. "By the time the brush hits the canvas, all the composition is done. From that point on, its all about craftsmanship. All I have to do is accurately render what I see in front of me."
Of course none of this adequately answers the question, "Why these objects?" Even though Wooters gave lectures in 2004 about the symbolism and motivations of historic still-life painters at both the Steeple Gallery and the Chesterton Art Center, the artist still doesn't have an adequate answer. "The tools and building materials I paint have no meaning in and of themselves. Narratives and symbolism just aren't that important to me. If I wanted to tell a story I'd write a book. I focus on what paintings are really good at doing, which is showing stuff. My painting ideas are about texture, transparency, idealized form, the negative space between objects. These are visual ideas and can only be shown with images. I just happen to use the still-life genre as the vehicle for these visual ideas."