Wayne White

I’ve always been interested in text in paintings because of its simplicity but also complexity. It's about much more than just the meaning of the words, it is also about the image that accompanies it, the context and also the type of font that the words are presented in. Font intrigues me because it conveys so much with so little. This is why I had always been interested in Ed Ruscha’s text paintings. What drew me to his paintings are its graphicness, dry wit and minimalism. So, when I saw Wayne White’s work, which is also text based, I was a bit inspired.
White’s paintings are funny to me because they consist of large 3D text painted painstakingly into old-fashioned landscape paintings that he found in old antique shops. The text would be painted with perfect perspective and lighting so that it looks like it is actually part of the world of the original painting.  As we look at White’s paintings, we are transported into a different world, where words are built into the landscape. They would be ironic and vulgar phrases like “Art is supposed to hypnotize you or something”, “Turd”, “Fanfuckintastic” and much more. It was fun to go through all his paintings, to read all of the strange, inappropriate but utterly familiar phrases that we might use in daily life, written in grand, other-worldly font. The artist is presenting language, colloquialism, something intangible, invisible and sometimes underestimated, as something that is mountainous, otherworldly, and grandly important.
Being someone who is not very good at expressing my own thoughts through words without using visuals, Wayne White’s work is very refreshing and exciting to me. I would like to make more text based work in the future.