Meet The Artists: Adrienne Wooster and Jeremy Schilling

Adrienne Wooster and Jeremy Schilling are Providence-based artists, thrilled to bring their work to a dual-exhibition at Erase Gallery. Adrienne is a multimedia collagist, combining photographic and found elements into her conceptual pieces. Jeremy is a contemporary realist painter, working primarily in oil and charcoal.

Together, they have curated a showcase that explores overlapping themes of isolation and connection, examination of self/body, and sonder: the realization that everyone — from your closest friend or lover to the most distant stranger or adversary — is living a life as rich and complicated as your own, regardless of your awareness of it. When it comes to art (and life) Adrienne is both a minimalist and a collector — collage works well for this dichotomy. She likes watching and listening to life, noticing the overlooked corners of each place or person, and piecing things together to make a whole. These exhibited pieces focus on the concept of integration, both spiritually and emotionally, analyzing the idea that demons are only the parts of our souls that we try to cast out or bury — anger, rage, jealousy, grief, and regret; emotions and truths we often detach from in hopes of being “put together,” — yet, conversely, the very things that make us whole. And, our externalized and othered parts are always there, wanting to be acknowledged and to share wisdom if we listen.

A while back, Adrienne made the decision to try to walk alongside rather than run from these pieces of herself, and continues to create work that pays homage to the mosaic of things she’s confronted and integrated along the way.

Jeremy’s presented mounted charcoal and graphite work is a selection from over 2,000 drawings, paintings, and mixed media pieces created since the middle of 2020. The main body of this collection is not about refinement, but rather the physicality of the charcoal and/or graphite medium, specifically highlighting the reactionary decision making in response to a live model’s pose. Each drawing is a five minute conversation: a question (the model’s pose) and the response (artist’s use of composition and marks). Working from life is a unique experience, as the act of observation is a fleeting one. There is only time to capture and record the most important elements and because of this, a drawing can become a journal of decisions of deemed importance. There is an honesty that emerges from these decisions. Conversely, his figurative works in oil and mixed media focus on creating a visual narrative through the selection of a single word, attempting to represent that word with the application, texture, and color of the paint. The resulting pieces create an effect of the embodiment of the internal thoughts of the figures being portrayed, bridging the internal world with the physical world of the figure. Works of facial features explore the senses and our attempt to make sense of our experiences.