Roy Wenzel
| Wenzel's parents came from Indonesia to Holland where he was born in 1959. As a baby he began to suffer from severe eczema and he was constantly hospitalised throughout the first eleven years of his life. It was during this time that it also became apparent that he was autistic. It is still not known whether his condition is innate or was induced by terrible infantile trauma. What is certain is that the memory of these times has remained strong, revealed in the recurrent presence in pictures such as this one (top) of a small self-portrait figure with arms raised behind his head, hair standing on end, and face screwed into a silent scream. He first discovered the urge to draw at the age of eleven and quickly began spontaneously to draw on anything he could find. The same working method is common to all of his production, consisting of an over-layering technique based on a strong linear framework. Individual elements are initially drawn in full view, without concession to the obscuring effects of their position in relation to the viewer. This is significant because he also tends to compose around a pictorial space based on linear perspective. The result is therefore a characteristic transparency of forms. Colour is subsequently blocked in and a process of obliteration and retrieval takes place, at times in the cause of emphasising particular figures or objects, but at others seemingly for purely composition reasons. Wenzel produces work of great sophistication whose immediate effect is, paradoxically, one of assured simplicity achieved by way of the boldness of the surface forms. He draws deep from the world he inhabits and those human beings whose lives are important to him. | For further information and a list of works currently available |
