Sobre el Artista

My name is Walt Hardy. BA in Fine Arts and Graphic Design, Norfolk State University, Norfolk, VA USA. Artist Statement: As a child growing up in a small southern city, I had a front row seat to the contradictions between good ideals and poor execution and between what was taught and what was practiced. In my community, inquiry could be seen as a good thing and inquiry could be perceived as crossing a line. In my surroundings, this concept of inquiry was called “signifying” or tending to other peoples business. I learned at an early age that “signifying” was both praised and damned, often within the same context. My life and art has been defined by the constant contradictions of inquiry. My work is a contemporary examination of prevailing attitudes, conceptions, and occurrences and the rules that forms our perceptions of art. My creations seek to identify and release the tension between the way something originally looks and the way it reveals itself to me, as well as, the tension between it’s obvious meaning and the implications my signifying, interpretations, and reconstruction has revealed. I take some inspiration from the Spanish artist Juan Gris, the Cubist, who was not confined by the rigid geometry of perspective. In a similar context, I introduce the idea of relativity into my works because I fuse selected elements from one or more subjects into one concentrated image. In my process, I strive to see beyond the distractions of the obvious in my subjects, to reveal though inquiry, close engagement, and observation their willingness to be transformed, and the meanings lying just beneath their surfaces, oftentimes, unseen by the casual observer. My goal is to inspire all who see my work to look more carefully at the world around them, to question the obvious, to peel away at the prevailing notions in art and in life, and to see the beauty in the dichotomy of rearranging the pieces. My website: walthardyart.com My email: walthardy@earthlink.net