Dutch multi-media artist, Gwen Anderson (artist name 'gwenchi'), uses grids of (tarnished) silver leaf organizing a silence on canvas onto which forms or images are placed as output from lifetime impressions. Silver has many appealing qualities. Its sheen and its color gives the work the illusion of being alive. Silver and aluminum leaf allow for organized mark making that gives the work a quality of anonymity, representing the spiritual as well as the hard-edged world of new technology.

 

The theme of Gwen Anderson's work is the distortion of memories over time. It is the development of mental images over time that are the source of her work. Memories, in her view, are not constant. They transform as new experiences are added. Their meaning alters. What do we actually remember? What have we forgotten? How do we “collage” fragments of memories to a full story? At one level the work is therefore connected to the mourning of events past, events that cannot be recreated. On another level it deals with the loss, distortion and re-formation of memories and becomes an exploration into the nature of memory.

 

Gwen started her fine arts education at the New York Art Student League and received her MA Fine Art from The Cass (London Metropolitan University).  She was shortlisted for the ‘Show me the Monet’ tv-show in the UK in February 2012. Gwen was a winner of the 2016 Shinseisaku Exhibition at the National Art Center of Tokyo. Her work is in several private collections around the world. She now lives and works in Curacao.