Gaining a BFA with Honours and a Masters of Fine Art (MFA) by Research, combined with training in sport, pain recovery and experience with Zen, has led Steve to a deep interest in conscious and unconscious processing. With over 27 individual exhibitions and numerous group shows over twenty years his work can consequently be found in public and private collections throughout Asia, Europe, the USA, New Zealand and Australia.
Have you ever wondered what gets passed on in your genes?
Hebb’s Law of neuroscience can be summarised as ‘what fires together, wires together’. This refers to how every thought and every emotion re-wires your brain’s neural network. We are born with our genetic predispositions held in our DNA, however this wiring process continues constantly. Therefore, the brain is shaped as life experience impacts on your neurology and physiology. What impact does this shaping have on later generations?
On the 100 year anniversary of the WWI Armistice, I have been reflecting on my ancestors experiences fighting in the trenches of the Western Front. Being gassed, shot and enduring extreme hardships have combined with their letters, trench maps and neurological mapping to create this body of work. Each synapse forms a new pathway as a whispered trace of times before.
How is it that they are gone, but still now part of me?
These artworks merge traditional philosophies and experimental media to reinvigorate the weighted, historical concerns of calligraphy, language and the nature of perception and meaning within a contemporary painting practice. Through the fusion of ancient analogue and contemporary digital communication, comes a unique extension of the calligraphic lineages of information transfer and gesture, which questions the nature of memory, language and perception.
“The juxtaposition of the ancient material of gunpowder fused into contemporary substrates becomes the ultimate Zen moment, where unseen universal forces remove the added material to leave a trace of that embodied gesture – I create the destruction that creates the creation.” – Steve Woodbury
