Forced Birth of Venus I
Mixed media collage, 9x12", 2022
Plague II (U.S. Death Toll Tops 800,000)
Collage, 7x5", 2021
Bridesmaid Bouquet
Oil on panel, 10x8", 2021
Bisexual Onion
Acrylic on paper, 18x24", 2022
Artist Talk: Saturday, November 12 at 4pm
Smash Mouth wasn’t lying – the years really do start coming and they don’t stop coming. In her debut solo show at Axis Gallery, Danielle Wogulis presents a collection of work borne out of a subconscious quest to grapple with time. When COVID-19 hit, she was one of the lucky introverts who was able to transition to working from home, and she decided (with variable success) to reclaim those minutes out of the day that would otherwise be spent commuting or attempting to socialize with humans or psyching herself up to leave the house, etc., for artmaking.
Wading through the relentless news stream of death tolls, civil unrest, and global capitalism’s mask slipping to further reveal its rotten core, Danielle turned to collage in an attempt to cut and reshape the world into more digestible pieces. She uses illustrations from a vintage Gray’s Anatomy textbook and flora/fauna field guides to confront the mystery of the body she lives in, and to forge a connection with nature while being stuck indoors. She tries to find old materials whose time has come and gone, and give them new life in a symphony of scraps.
Danielle has also been reveling in the long-standing practice of still life painting to preserve and extend slices of time. During COVID, her use of painting focused on finding joy and playfulness in the everyday, and creating small escapes from the horrors of Literally Everything Else. Her small oil paintings are quick studies of plants that came into her home and walks she took on the river - pretty little things, excusing herself from the exhausting angsty artist's compulsion to imbue a deep meaning into every piece and just painting for the sake of painting. The acrylic pieces on paper are a collaborative experience with her partner, who sets up still life scenes for the two of them to paint together.
Paul Blart is all of us.
Artist Bio
Danielle Wogulis is a two-dimensional artist based in Sacramento, California. She primarily works in oil and acrylic paint, as well as collage and cut paper. She explores the human body as a site of expression, using figurative and botanical subjects to find the dreamlike in the mundane: sinister plants, inanimate objects that evoke a sense of ritualistic symbolism, etc. She’s interested in the absurdity and tension created by the inseparability of our corporeal realities and our knowledge of the world and ourselves.
Danielle earned her Bachelor of Arts in Painting at University of California, Santa Barbara and she studied at the University of Leeds in the UK. She is a participating artist in the 2021 Capitol Box Art Revival project.