ABOUT THE ARTIST
Christopher Wilke was born in New York City and lived there until he left the hospital with his parents to northern New Jersey. During High School he excelled in art and drama and soon found himself juggling between after school art classes, building sets for the drama clubs, working out and scripting plays, and a gifted academic program called ICE. Under the strain of commitment to remain an overachiever rebellion set in, and he began to experiment with people's reactions to outrageous visual stimuli, going so far as to paint The Thinker's Crucifixion as a backdrop for the school's play The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (a psychological phantasm that was promptly painted over at the faculties command), and on the occasion of finding dead ducks on campus proceeding to throw them about the girl's locker room complimented by graffiti that read "Mammals have souls, Ducks lay eggs". When he was formally accused of having actually killed the ducks he flew into a rage at the blasphemy of leveling such a charge at the only student in the school to admit to his animal heritage, and was formally expelled for his conduct.
His parents were in the midst of going through a difficult divorce and Christopher found himself begging his friends to use their cars to attend night school. It was here that he learned the power of money and how important it was to have. "These people that professed to be my friends were charging me $60 to drive me to school. At the end of every week I was broke. I knew though that I had made my own bed and I had to stick it out." So he worked outdoors in the freezing winter so he could afford to hitch rides to night school where he was confronted by teens he had known in his regular school but had disappeared. Mostly pregnant girls and others that would bring their newborns to class with them for lack of better options. Eggs would have been less disrupting.
Eventually he landed a job in a factory for better money and immediately moved out on his own. He lived in a boarding house that was occupied by such characters as a meth addict, numerous alcoholics, a 400 lb. man, a schizophrenic, and his neighbor the rapist. "I would awake most nights to hear him forcing himself on his woman. They used to be married I think. It made me feel terrible and I talked to the only sane guy who lived there. He said that he had put the woman in a motel and found that she left without checking out to be back with her rapist ex-husband. Some people just don't want to be helped. I think most people are exactly where they want to be, even if they can't admit it."
In this environment Christopher's misanthropic world view was sharpened and he used it to feed his art, as can be seen in his earlier pieces. "Steven Leyba (misanthropist, modern artist, and father of 'sexpressionism') says it best. Why paint monsters? It's monster shit! People are the real monsters."
Eventually Christopher left the boarding house, having gotten his diploma and moved back to New York City to attend Parson's. He quickly resented the bohemian culture that seemed to typify the art student, and instead rebelled against the taught philosophy that 'anything goes' and 'express yourself freely', and opted instead for rigor and realism in his work. Having no professors there that believed in the power of figurative painting Christopher considers himself largely self taught. He would counter talk of Rothko with Dali and complimented Science and Charity over Gueronica. "I didn't even know what a maul stick was until I left NY."
Right out of school he landed a job as a portrait photographer and has been capturing human souls on film ever since. "I never appreciate photography as an art form until I did it. There's a talent and a relationship that's needed to capture that exact moment on film. It borders on precognition. Even now I want to experiment more with photography for artistic rather than professional purposes."
Christopher has had the opportunity to meet some celebrated people and to celebrate a few of his own choosing. He has worked on numerous commissions and collaborative projects including but not limited to web and CD cover design for underground musical outfits, portrait painting, photography, and was chosen best of show in the Harrisburg Mall's art and wine tasting expo, was accepted into Art @ Large's juried competition (one of the few NY galleries that still believe in figurative painting), and had the honor of selling his first painting at the age of 25; an original, not a commission (Magus I).
He currently lives in a remote cottage in northern New Jersey in continued pursuit of his artistic and pragmatic goals.
