In Wendy's new exhibition, Révèle, the American artist explores absence, beauty and the corporeal in her representation of the human form.

Révèle brings together watercolours and charcoal and chalk drawings on white or brown paper capturing both live models and statues, all caught in a fleeting glance that belies stunning craft.

The work reflects an ongoing conversation around stone and flesh that Artin has pursued as one of the world’s most brilliant watercolourists, while pushing her into new technical achievements.

Her work shows fragments of the human body, allowing the viewer to imagine the rest. The light chalk or brushwork adds to our sense of a fleeting glimpse, caught in time.

Fragments reveal, give meaning, beauty, perhaps unease. Here the human body is present in all its pulsating life, its joy and fragility. The live models are in voluptuous poses, sprawled out after merriment and bacchanal.

They are a celebration of our round bodies, velvety torsos, our smooth skin reflecting who we are in all our lovable fascinating seductive selves.

Artin lives with her family in Rome. The once upon a time nomad arrived there 25 years ago. The Eternal City provides one side of the coin in the fountain for Artin, with its classicism and its eloquent light being a constant companion.

And if nudes can cause the eye to avert, statues invite closer inspection. With all Wendy's work, the viewer is drawn in and up close rewarded: the illusion vanishing into the abstraction of chalk dust or the residue of pigment from watercolour evaporated.

Adam and Eve may have used their leaves to cover up, but there's nothing modest about the most ambrosial fruit of all, the fig. Artin captures the juicy decadent flesh with visually stunning watercolours of figs from the summer harvest.

Pat Nicholson
October 2019