Spencer Winans

Exhibition: April 30th - June 30th, 2024
Opening Reception: May 2nd, 2024 from 5:00pm-8:00pm

Curated by Naomi Nguyen and William Herbert Holt III

Originally from New Jersey, Spencer Winans is a self taught artist, who has lived and worked in Portland, OR since August 2015. This body of work was created during 2018-2023, a particularly fruitful period of artistic development for Winans who quit their job at the local weekly newspaper to pursue making art full time in 2021.

In their debut solo exhibition, It Doesn’t Get Easier, Winans vividly abstracts the world around him, whether it be Portland landscapes or amalgamations of figurative expression. The unfinished edges of the canvas point to Winans interest in process and his status as a self-taught artist. The rawness gestures to a refusal to edit for display and institutional acceptance. His work invites us to contemplate the stories that lurk in the depths of our subconscious.

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Artist Statement:

It Doesn’t Get Easier comes from the hard fact of making art. Every instance I think I’ve got it figured out, I don’t. It always takes more work, more time. It’s never quite good enough, until suddenly it is, and nothing can make it better. You know it’s done when you see it and it exists there, like it’s really there, on its own, by itself. Always the work demands more than I have to give, at least initially. Occasionally – and this is the exception, not the rule – it doesn’t take every ounce of what I have to give: In other words, sometimes the work comes easily and finishes promptly. I love when that happens. These instances are rare though and as a result only contribute to my suffering. In the end, every piece requires a doggedness and determination that borderlines obsession – is born of and must break free from all personal and institutional dogma and conceit. 

Maybe I'm lazy at heart. Maybe I'm sad. Maybe a little of both. A certain disappointment, a dejectedness lives with me always. I think it comes from not having had a solid home, growing up, or having one and then not having one. Many Americans, in one way or another, I think can relate to this at some level, are a part of some type of diaspora. I think at least with making art it’s the best way that I know how to connect theese roots with others, who may also be familiar w/ the the cold embrace of this vast, brutal expanse of American culture, or lack thereof.

I was in my early twenties, after college, living in New York city amongst fellow artists, when instagram and smartphones came together. It really was revolutionary, because at first instagram really was a new form of communication between friends, a conversation of pictures in real time. It felt selfless and free until it didn’t and became the opposite, which is more like how the world felt before these technologies had come around. Of course my visual art investigations would require much further work and personal study. But at the end of the day I love the conversation that forms around art, or despite it, and most of all I love a good story.

I build and stretch the canvases myself, mostly because that’s the cheapest way to paint on a large surface. Most paintings larger than 20” take a few months or up to a year to complete. I tend to work on multiple pieces at a time. Sometimes they carry a theme. For example, “portland landscapes” or (currently) “skin and viscera”.