“… one direction in Surrealist painting presents, in meticulous detail, recognizable scenes and objects which are taken out of natural context, distorted and combined in fantastic ways as they might be in dreams…”
H..H. Arnason

Bird With a Bun / 8″ x 10″ / Oil on panel / Wendy Rolfe / $475

In early March I drove through the brooding countryside of northeast Iowa. My destination was Wendy Rolfe’s studio. I had first seen the artist’s work in a show at Coe College, and thought it a good fit for Campbell Steele.

Strawberry Still Life / 8″ x 10″ / Oil on panel / Wendy Rolfe / $475

Surrealism, religious iconography and Baroque still life painting are all commingled in Rolfe’s work, and the viewer is drawn into a world apart. Birds with the heads of women, a Madonna with an eye that morphs into the head of a sparrow, and ominously cavernous blossoms succumb to gravity in the compositions of this Brooklyn (N.Y.) artist transplanted to northeastern Iowa.

Satori / 21.5″ x 24″ / Oil on panel / Wendy Rolfe / $1,600

It is a measure of the reign of pluralism in the visual arts that Rolfe’s pieces merge such disparate painting traditions. It is the vision of the artist that renders the choice so hauntingly successful.

Bird in a Bough / 8″ x 10″ / Oil on panel / Wendy Rolfe / $475