The Garden of Eden, c. 2001, acrylic, crayon, and ink on canvas, 60 x 47.75 in (152.4 x 120.2 cm)
The symbols Wick employs in her oeuvre are a rich blend of the mundane and the extraordinary, with recurring motifs such as travel, domesticity, and nature, as well as mortality and loss.
The imagery in Wick's works are the direct product of her own personal, highly developed idiosyncratic pictorial and symbolic language. Their subject matter is as informed by her vivid imagination and interpretation of reality as it is by current events. Brightly hued depictions of women or figures of indeterminate gender are garbed in quasi shamanistic raiment, masks or face paint. The flat, fluid, seemingly organic or vegetal forms that populate her grounds occupy the same thematic space as the numerous birds that seem to either peacefully coexist with her figures or accompany them like spirit animals. The density of her compositions, in which several paintings are liable to exist side by side, is enhanced by the riotous vibrancy of her palette.
Deliberately removed from the centers of artistic production and commerce, Wick has allowed herself to experiment and pursue a practice uninhibited by the pressures of a conventional career, producing a rich and coherent body of work which demands to be engaged with, much like her life, on its own terms.