In Kendra Dawn Wadsworth’s paintings and ceramics, coarse, jagged surfaces expose her kinetic process. Competing dualities—confinement / exposure, entrapment / liberation, crumpling / unfolding, surface / depth—move across and through her works. These juxtapositions disclose a sensibility towards chaos that Wadsworth cultivates through intuition and material responsiveness. Yet, while Wadsworth engages objects and forms that suggest conflict and struggle, her decomposition implies regeneration. The decay and deterioration on view offer their own forms of energy. (Emily Smith, Executive Director, 1708 Gallery)
Kendra Dawn Wadsworth earned a BFA in Painting and Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University and an MFA in Painting from the University of Pennsylvania. She also spent time studying abroad as an exchange student at The University of Plymouth in Exeter, England. Wadsworth has had work shown extensively throughout the country and she is the recipient of many prestigious awards. For the past ten years, Wadsworth has been instructing fine arts at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Prior to that, she was a fine arts instructor at numerous colleges and art centers in Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Tucson, Arizona. Wadsworth has also worked as a Union Scenic Artist 829 and 52 in New York City and Philadelphia; most notably, designing and creating the installations for the Academy Award winning motion picture, A Beautiful Mind.
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