Six Point Adjustable, Chris Woods, oil on canvas, 2005, 54.5” x 36.5”

North America’s love affair with the automobile takes on a double meaning in Chris Woods’ latest works on modern culture. At least two of his large, allegorical oil paintings show contemporary people in modern settings wielding medieval-looking swords.

“Some see cars as a war on humanity,” he says. “Once we built these machines, then we had to have roads. Roads take up the landscape and make it difficult to walk or bike in the city, making our world more confining. And cars brought us ‘the strip’ - roads dominated by retail stores, fast food, service outlets and motels - which many find ugly.

“But I hate the notion that people think pop culture is not worthy. It’s our culture. Is that a bad thing?”

Woods has studied the work of influential architect Robert Venturi and others who designed for commercial strips. He’s inspired by their writings, and says “there have been some pretty heavy hitters working on these ideas.”

Cortez, Chris Woods, oil on canvas, 2007, 60” x 55”

It is with these dueling perspectives in mind that Woods sees the sword as a perfect metaphor for the car. “We can use it for our own freedom or we can use it for the oppression of man.” His prequel show, The Magic Hour – Part One in 2004 took a decidedly darker look at advertising. It may be why magazines like Adbusters use his images in their publications.

Woods has been interested in advertisements and billboards from the start of his painting, and his works often mimic these aspects of consumer society. It is the main reason he works in the photo-realist style. “Photo-realism suits the advertising imagery better,” he says. “I don’t have much choice. I could try to force another style but that would be like speaking with a different voice.”

Woods approaches each painting project much the same way. He begins with a set of ideas and does some primitive sketching. When a strong central idea emerges, he begins taking photographs. He shoots subjects in a studio and also takes some outdoor photos of landscapes, then the studio and landscape photos are integrated with the help of a computer software program and projected onto a canvas, and he’s ready for the application of paint on canvas.

“I often do a first underpass with acrylic paints. I usually do the background first, then the bigger props and the set pieces. I save the figures for the last.”

Cactus, Chris Woods, oil on canvas, 2006, 60.5” x 55.5”

Woods always finishes his canvases with oil paint. “It’s the perfect medium,” he says. “Acrylics are so dead compared to oil. John Singer Sargent paved the way for oils and reflecting light. There’s a real glow to oils.” 

Chris Woods’ obsession with car culture began at the intersection of two major events in his life. He had been working for several years on his hyper-realist paintings that used fast food as a representative of modern life, culminating in his shows Mctopia in 1998 and Dreamland in 1999.

“What’s the other side of fast food culture? It’s the car. This seemed a natural transition to make. About that time I was driving home and turned off a freeway ramp when I was rear-ended by an SUV. Those were the events that began my car obsession.”

Sable Black, Chris Woods, oil on canvas, 2006, 90.5” x 60.5”

Part of this transition involved paying more attention to elements of landscape, something of a surprise to Woods. “Landscape was never something I considered working on as a subject, but it’s a major part of cars and advertising about cars. In a strange way, I’ve come to really love it, whether it’s urban or desert or some other natural landscape.”

And in a way, Woods’ wary admiration and latent fear of the automobile are in his new paintings - a kind of double-sided love. This is reflected in the work titled Cactus: two people stand highlighted by a car’s headlights with an evening desert in the background. One is handing the other a large crystal while behind them is a surreal floating ocean mine. No sword in this painting, but the dual nature of Woods’ experience with the automobile is clear in the presence of treasure (the crystal) and implied danger (the mine). 

 — BY Beverly Cramp