I started seeing potential in discarded items. Creating is fun! That process—taking something broken and reshaping it—felt like a meditation on my own healing.
Coco: Tell me about your artwork.
Wyne: I create sculptures using recyclable materials. At first, I wasn’t sure what kind of art I wanted to do—painting or sculpture—but I quickly realized painting wasn’t for me. My hands were shaking when I first tried to follow a famous painting, and it reminded me too much of my brain injury. I wasn’t a fan of that.
Coco: What materials do you use?
Wyne: I use a lot of found objects—aluminum, bricks, tiles, anything I can pick up from the streets. Toronto is filled with recyclables, and after returning from South America, I started seeing potential in discarded items. Creating is fun!
Coco: What inspires you?
Wyne: I enjoy the mindlessness of making art. I studied artists to understand how they come up with ideas, but for me, it’s more about feeling than technique. I want my art to "tickle the brain," to make people think. At the same time, I use art to take myself back to my childhood. It’s a way explore childish fun.
Coco: What’s the theme of your work?
Wyne: A big theme in my work is disembodiment—taking things apart and putting them back together in a new way. It’s also about integration to form an identity. I don’t keep most of my work; I give it to others, especially those in the brain injury community.
Coco: Tell me about your creation process.
Wyne: I started working in a creative studio in Chinatown, Toronto, in 2018. But the idea of making art started earlier, around 2016 or 2017 when I used to walk past housing in Regent Park near St. Michael’s Hospital. At first, I was just experimenting. I saw how painters used oil to splash onto the canvas, but I wanted something more tactile. When I found discarded tiles on the street, I started breaking them apart. That process—taking something broken and reshaping it—felt like a meditation on my own healing.
Coco: How has your work evolved from 2018 to 2022?
Wyne: In 2018, I was just having fun. It was a personal healing process, a way to work through trauma and feelings of worthlessness. I started by breaking the tiles, expressing my trauma through destruction and reconstruction. But by 2022, my focus shifted. The world was in lockdown, and people were depressed. My art became less about my own healing and more about entertaining others, bringing them joy during a dark time. I ended up giving most of my 2022 work to brain injury organizations.
Some of Wyne’s work: https://nonsensercise.blogspot.com/