Back to Nature

By the mid-80s, Wengenroth had become convinced that the art world was top-heavy with theory and that it had outstripped performance. He withdrew, conceptually, and began a period of “self-exile”, devoted to black and white drawing directly from nature.

 

In this return to basics, he spent three years drawing natural scenes in a rural corner of New Jersey.

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For an exhibition of these drawings at the Field Gallery in Martha’s Vineyard, he wrote: “It is absorbing to be engaged with the natural world because the subject is at once visually complex and sublimely disinterested.”