Irene Wood

Irene Wood is an American born, half Chinese multimedia artist based in Seattle, WA. In her paintings, the landscape becomes an abstract terrain through which time, memory, and cultural duality intersect. Influenced by the spirit and spatial sensibility of ancient shan-shui (mountain-water) Chinese brush paintings, what may first appear as abstract patterning reveals itself as a layered language of topography and psyche where micro meets macro. There is a deliberate dissonance at play: between the ancient and the contemporary, the remembered and the imagined, the inherited and the self-forged. Ultimately, these external simulations are mirrors of internal geographies that invite the viewer to lose orientation and, in doing so, discover the subtle terrain of a fragmented and fluid identity.

More recently a new series from Irene has emerged where she reimagines the table as sacred ground, a space of inheritance, ritual, and everyday tenderness. This is a place where life’s joys, conflicts, and farewells unfold. The shift from the vastness of land formations to the intimacy of a table might seem unrelated. In many ways, it’s its own kind of landscape. This too is a place where memory, stories, events accumulate and the layers of pain...