ARTIST STATEMENT
Wayne Ferrebee makes art which explores the dynamic between the natural world and the artifical manmade ecosystem (recognizing that the latter is wholly subsumed within the former). With a background in biology, history, toymaking, and painting, Ferrebee utlilizes symbols and narratives to contextualize the role which individual organisms have in the context of larger life cycles. Thus a sole flatfish becomes an avatar for the duality of predator/prey. Beasts of the watery realm join with mythological beings from antiquity to show how our cherished aspirations contain poisonous hooks. Each of us thinks we are a heroic individual, yet we are also a tiny part of a billion-headed hydra. So too each artwork of dynamically intertwined symbols represents the cycles within life, history, and paleontology. By representing the stories of natural history in the manner of fairytales, Ferrebee highlights patterns of creation and destruction not readily discernible from the perspective of a single lifetime.