Harold Waight
Harold Waight is a story teller, his surreal oil paintings speak to social consciousness by combining imagination and reality.
Born in the jungle of Belize, Waight spent part of his childhood surrounded by the jungles of Belize with a plethora of Mayan, Caribbean, and Latin culture exposure.
After moving to the United States, Waight would adopt perception from his multi cultural and multi racial experiences to cary on. Experiences that would lay out the ground work for his life’s work in art.
Now as an adult, Waight reflects his unique experience of life into his work with a delightful playfulness by creating characters that hold alien like features in surreal settings.
This depiction of outcasts/underdogs within society or as he would call it, the alien human, serves as a place holder for anyone who has ever felt the pressures of society and for any one who has ever felt like an outcast or underdog within any situation or place. They are portrayed from both perspectives of the viewer, either good or bad.
He then builds story’s around his alien human with current past or future forecasted events that deal with human rights, conditions from those different perspectives. Whether this event being a prediction of what is to come, historical of what has happened or conditional of what is going on. it ultimately varies by each painting.
Waight Combines bright colors, composition and concept. Each figure demonstrates its own individual narrative around topics such as Human, political and or social views as well as conditions of humanity.
Despite being quite colorful paintings that can at times hold a humorous outlook, they put forth pertinent political aspects and also speak of trauma, and of sorrow among minority groups and conditions faced by humanity all while the viewer narrates the story line through perspective.
His personal ritual of mixing and applying paint is honed to a surgical precision, a method informed by his extensive experience in photography. Laying down each thick, richly pigmented brushstroke with attentive patience, Waight builds up rich thin layers of paint. The artist harmonizes this pristine and sophisticated painting process with the unfettered joy and curiosity exemplary of imagination. Waight takes us to the far “what ifs” of reality by showcasing futuristic possibilities and alternative outcomes of current social construct.
His paintings are a treat for the intellectual, a phenomenon for the spectator, and a delight for the dreamer.
The impetus for Waight’s artistic odyssey occurred during his many experiences derived from his multicultural exposure and his extensive history working in fashion as an adult. While photographing for designers stylists models agencies, etc… Waight learned not only about the harmonies within textures and patterns, but the colors and compositions that were the stepping stones for his unique acquired style. There is a wild but controlled feel to his work.
