August 7 - September 5, 2021
Opening Reception
Saturday August 7, 5-7pm
Free and Open to Public, Masks required indoors
The Dedee Shattuck Gallery is thrilled to present a solo show by Caitlin Wylde.
Wylde grew up in South Dartmouth, but spent most of her adult life in California. Her bold use of bright colors and simplified forms – both in sculpture and painting – create a compellingly cohesive body of work that takes the viewer on a visual journey. This electrifying work vibrates with abstract energy while being rooted in natural forms. We see the sun, tree roots and limbs, clouds, flowers, water, and the celestial bodies within a mature language of abstraction.
Caitlin Wylde
Instagram | CV
Home is South-Eastern Massachussets. Home is where my heart is. Home is the land, the light, the smells and the change of seasons. My home was originally Wampanoag land. I feel lucky and grateful to have grown up in the woods and by the sea of this land, to run free as a child, barefoot and being allowed to let my imagination run wild. When I come home, I am grounded in the earth, I feel at peace and my heart is full.
I have lived most of my adult life in California, but I have always returned to Dartmouth. This work was inspired by my childhood in Massachussetts, my father’s colorful geometric sculptures & paintings, my mother’s garden, the giant oak tree, swimming in the Slocum river with the phosphorecence, the Osprey and the Bluefish.
“I love borders. August is the border between summer and autumn; it is the most beautiful month I know.
Twilight is the border between day and night and the shore is the border between sea and land. The border is longing: when both have fallen in love but still haven’t said anything. The border is to be on the way. It is the way that is the most important thing.”
“You must go on a long journey before you can really find out how wonderful home is.”
- Tove Jansson
Caitlin Wylde and I met 20 years ago at a pool party in Los Angeles. I was fresh out of graduate school in studio art using all the syntax that weighs down on what should really be a very basic and intuitive process. Caitlin invited me to her house in Echo Park.
When I entered her studio, I found color, floor to ceiling. The hardwood floors were covered in greens, reds, and gloss white enamel paint. It was so refreshing to visit a studio where its inhabitant didn’t care for the lingo of the moment and the university-industry complex that bore down on artists. Enter whaling, sea, flags and detritus found on the seashore, as influence for raw inspiration. The colors, the materials, the experiences meld with a personal narrative, shifting hues toward a search for the unknown. These were unfamiliar to my
California sensibilities. When I visited Caitlin in South Dartmouth, I understood her work was completely informed by her home.
Art as experience. Cecil and Sally Wylde raised their daughters in a home designed by Cecil and his father. Space, light, raw materials influenced by several generations of artists also connected to the land and their environment. There is no discourse to be fabricated - you understand it because you know the place from which it is born.
- Giovanni Jance
