Danielle Wogulis

About Danielle Wogulis

I primarily work in oil and acrylic paint, and try to strike a balance between femininity and aggression in both my handling of materials and choice of subject matter. I use figurative and botanical subjects to find the dreamlike in the mundane: sinister plants, inanimate objects that evoke a sense of ritualistic symbolism, psychological landscapes. I’m interested in the absurdity and tension created by the inseparability of our corporeal realities from our knowledge of the world and ourselves, and in depicting non-human life forms with the agency to fight back against systematic destruction.

My largest body of work developed during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Wading through the relentless news of death tolls, civil unrest, and capitalism’s mask slipping to further reveal its rotten core, I turned to collage in an attempt to cut and reshape the world into more digestible pieces. I used illustrations from a vintage Gray’s Anatomy textbook, scraps from art catalogs, and flora/fauna field guides to forge a connection with nature while living and working in an urban center, juxtaposing human anatomy with other pieces of nature, like pulmonary systems surrounded by prickly thistles. I was trying to confront my fears of the immediate threat of the virus to our individual bodies, as well as the structural threat of public institutions leaving us to sicken and die.

Collaging is fun, but painting is the love of my life. Using collages as preliminary sketches for larger oil paintings felt like a natural way to bridge the two mediums. On My Gay Wizard Shit (OMGWS) is a series of paintings that breathe life into my existing small-scale collages by transforming them into large oil and acrylic pieces. OMGWS paintings explore themes of power, nature, the human body, and fantasy, and are homages to the lush sensuality of botanical forms, or glimpses of worlds that are quietly tumultuous. Some are imaginative moments of drama, for which the viewer is free to construct their own narrative. I mix and match anatomical and botanical elements into psychological landscapes from a perspective that is queer, whimsical, and (I hope) has a touch of magic.