Pervading his work is an aura of possibility that is more threat than blessing. Shapeshifters wander with menace through Byzantine villages and Salvador Dali moonscapes, driven by indecipherable motives. Bizarre creatures spring up at random to devour, digest, and assimilate each other. Colors explode, incandescing with psychotropic intensity. Such constancy of change pitches a disconcerting challenge to perception.
Comprehension is baffled.
And yet, for all this shifting strangeness, there's a weird mechanical force governing the alternate realms Woodring depicts, a principle of cosmic puppetry. It's perhaps this vision of fate that makes Woodring's drawings so fascinating, and, at times, so disturbing. When I ask Woodring, over coffee at his University District residence, why he thinks someone might object so powerfully to his art, he seems genuinely baffled. It's certainly not as overtly gross as a lot of stuff that you get to see. I've always thought my stuff was kind of subtle and hidden away, and unless you were awake to it, it just sort of sits there and looks like nothing.