A native Texan, Wayne Pate’s itinerant nature has since led him to momentarily reside in New Zealand before returning to his beloved Brooklyn, New York which has been home since 1992. His artwork tells the story of his evolution as an artist which began with childhood dreams of exotic, far-flung destinations and time lost to the labyrinthine halls of museums, and moved through an intrepid persona in adulthood. Classical shapes, native earth bound colours and whispered narratives of ancient cultures previously tethered to his imagination have largely driven a visual language that has established him as an artist of global relevance.
Today, the deliberation of Wayne’s previous work has begun to yield to the richness of intuition. A new body of work has emerged as a reconciliation of his collected experiences and intentional, cathartic reflection. In his own words Wayne likens his current practice to the feeling of “having been out to sea for a while and now I’ve come back to port.” The gentle constant of a long-standing preoccupation with line and the reoccurring subject of irises has come to light through the gift of hindsight and time spent riffling through old sketchbooks which left him conceding to a sense of departure and the realisation that one creative journey has naturally run its course and made way for another.
The Iris has become the reoccurring theme in this ongoing series due to its natural shape and silhouette which resonates with Wayne’s established graphical sensibilities. Creating a harmony between nature and an abstract representation has long been a focus and now, with clarity of thought and acknowledgement of all that has come to pass, Wayne’s work has shifted into a state of reductive visual relief which presents with a poetic simplicity infused with a sense of creative exhalation.