Andrew Wykes was born in the UK just outside of London. He studied at Richmond upon Thames College, and Epsom School of Art and Design where he received his undergraduate qualifications in fine art. His graduate studies were completed at American University, Washington, DC where he received his MFA in painting. He has taught art for twenty five years in schools and colleges in the UK, Belgium and the US. Andrew has shown his work nationally and internationally including London and in New York. He is a recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board Initiative Grant and in 2009 he was awarded a fellowship at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation in Mayo, Ireland. He is currently an Associate Professor at Hamline University in St Paul. Andrew Lives in Northfield, Minnesota with his wife and two daughters.
"As far back as I can remember I have had a strong sense of place and deep passion and attachment for the landscape. My work is rooted in the landscape tradition of Europe and, in particular, my home country of England. I have always been conscious of and muse about what it is that I bring to the landscape before me, on any particular moment, or what it gives to me. My cultural and geographical influences certainly play their part of how I view my surroundings, but there is also my personal visual history and emotional recollections from the past. These are hazy memories, often lodged deep in my unconscious and at best I have only vague ideas about their sources. But these states of mind are charged with palpable feelings that are set off unexpectedly during the act of looking and painting the land before me: how the brilliant midday sun is absorbed into the night dark foliage of an aging oak tree; the distant hum of a pale blue horizon seen unexpectedly from around a corner. The experience of painting a landscape ‘on site’ can bring me feelings of refuge or unease as well as melancholy or hope, feelings that hold me in the present moment. I am aware that the landscape itself is unresponsive—the love I feel for it will not change it from its position of indifference." |
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