'The aim is to balance the terror of being alive with the wonder of being alive.' This caption from Carlos Castaneda is written across the bottom of a painting of a nude man, who balances precariously on an overhead beam. The caption could serve as the motto of much of Woody's work, both his figures and his landscapes. If his panoramic landscapes sweep away to a distant horizon and leave you with a heart-stopping sense of your own solitude, his nude figures expose the raw existential isolation at the very core of the human condition.
William Peterson