Wendy Westlake

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Veronique Wantz Gallery is excited to host Wendy Westlake’s third solo show with the gallery, RENEWED, opening on Saturday, October 4th, 2025, and running through Saturday, November 15, 2025. For sales inquiries or questions, please email: gallery@veroniquewantz.com

Minnesota-based artist Wendy Westlake’s new body of work in RENEWED investigates the layered and complex visual language between artist and nature. Throughout her career, Westlake has returned to the natural world as inspiration, and over a decade ago, it served as a catalyst for her venture into vibrant, large-scale botanical abstractions.

In RENEWED, Westlake’s paintings are often inspired by the changing seasons, especially the long-awaited transition from winter’s lingering chill to spring’s renewal and vitality of spring. Instead of portraying the cold, merciless grip of winter in her paintings, Westlake offers viewers a vivid promise of spring’s return, as her abstract forms and palettes conjure warmth, growth and renewal. Organic imagery in many of her works suggest blossoming trees and branches, sprouting plants, lush vegetation, dense foliage, and vibrant flowers in bloom.

This thematic focus on aspiration and transformation ultimately informed the title of the exhibition, RENEWED. Westlake writes: Daylight hours dwindle, and the air grows colder, signaling that winter is just around the corner. I often find these gray frozen months challenging. Lake swims, bike rides and walks through lush green forests feel like an impossibility. Having seen the cycle repeat itself over and over again, I wait, trusting that the rest and dormancy of this season are a necessary mystery. What appears lifeless will be renewed. 

 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Wendy Westlake is known for her individual and original modern style, often infusing mid-century influences, as well as her accomplished palettes and intuitive forms, resulting in a unique and splendid pictorial harmony displayed throughout her balanced compositions.

Wendy approaches painting with a sense of adventure; each canvas is an opportunity to explore relationships through shape and color. Originally from Washington state, Wendy earned her Associate degree in Applied Art from Pima College in Tucson, Arizona, where she studied oils, ceramics and printmaking.

By 1992, Wendy was in Minnesota where she became heavily involved with the Twin Cities watercolor community. In 2012, she became a board member of the Minnesota Watercolor society, eventually becoming President from 2014-2016. Wendy soon craved working on a larger scale than paper would allow, leading her back to her earlier training with oils and acrylics.

Working out of her studio in Zumbrota, Minnesota, Wendy is continuously influenced by her background in watercolor. She is also inspired by the American Abstract Expressionists, particularly the color fields of Mark Rothko and collages of Conrad Marca-Relli.