Arthur Hughes, painter

Contact Arthur Hughes

Represented by: Prince Street Gallery, New York City.

Born in Vancouver, Canada, in 1943 I grew up in Ojai, California, from 1947 to 1960. Ojai attracted artists and dealers, including the ceramicist Beatrice Wood, art dealer James Vigeveno, painters Gui Ignon, Gerd & Irene Koch, Liam O'Gallagher and his companion Bob Reem, and sculptor Alice DeCreeft. These were the ones I met through my mother and with Gerd Koch and Gui Ignon, had classes with.
In childhood my parents were also friends with the Boston realist, later Abstract Expressionist, William H. (Bill) Littlefield (1902 - 69). As a four-year-old, Bill's sizable Falmouth, Massachusetts, studio was awe-inspiring; this to me was what it meant to be an artist; he was painting my oldest sister's portrait. In 1997 I took on a multi-year project of documenting the life and work of William H. Littlefield. This has resulted in a detailed Littlefield chronology, exhibition history, and collectors' list that also documents his relationship with Lincoln Kirstein, Monroe Wheeler, Eric Schroeder, and other participants in the homoerotic artistic underground, as well as his later years as Abstract Expressionist and secretary of The Club, the social and intellectual organization of Abstract Expressionists of the 10th Street scene.

This effort led to the Littlefield retrospective at the Cape Cod Museum of Art, Dennis, MA (May - August, 2006), with companion shows at the Provincetown Art Association Museum (July - September 2006) and the Woods Hole Historical Museum. I participated on panels devoted to Littlefield with photographer Fred W. McDarrah and curator James Bakker. From this exploration, I felt as if I had studied under Littlefield, after the fact.
In high school at the Colorado Rocky Mountain School (1960 - 62) my art teacher Malcolm Brown, like Littlefield, had been a student of Hans Hofmann in the 1940s. In his classes, it was Hofmann technique that was taught. In the summer after graduating, I took up landscape painting, at Malcolm Brown's Taos home. From then on it was landscape that was most interesting to me.

At Bard College (1962 - 67) my teachers were the sculptor Harvey Fite; painters Anton Refregier, John CuRoi, and Louis Schanker; and art historian Hanna Dinehardt. This lead to a B.A. in art. Later at Hunter College in New York City in its masters in art program my instructors were the minimalist sculptor Tony Smith; Abstract Expressionist Ray Parker; and art historians/curators Eugene Goosens and Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr.
But it was always the landscape and plein air experience itself, whether in California, the Southwest, or Cape Cod, that was and is the inspiration to work.
After finishing my Hunter master's thesis, which was based on interviews with artists who had been in the John Reed Clubs in the late 1920s and early ’Äò30s, there seemed to be no place for painters doing what I was doing. At the time, the linear progression of art movement was in fashion. Pop Art, Op Art, and hard edge dominated the scene. The rising movement against the Vietnam War and social unrest among artists seemed much more compelling, and I dove into radical politics. At first it was with the Art Workers Coalition and an associated organization, Museum: A Project of Living Artists. ’ÄúMuseum,’Äù an artists' organization, had a loft gallery on Broadway and Waverly Place and was the site of alternative shows, art auctions benefiting the antiwar movement organized by Ivan Karp, and meetings of the Art Workers Coalition and women and Black artists' groups.

In several of these groups I collaborated with, and learned from, James Gahagan, the abstract painter, Hofmann right-hand man, and teacher who was a friend until his death in 1999.

With the demise of Museum, I was involved in the antiwar movement for a time, and eventually found myself working as a marine pipefitter in the Brooklyn Navy Yard during the 1980s. This was followed by various copy editing jobs with Pathfinder Press, Konecky & Konecky, ARTnews, Red Book, and finally the American Society of Civil Engineers.

In the mid-1990s photography became an obsession, especially large-format landscapes. This was followed by a renewed interest in landscape painting, my current focus.
In October 2007 I was voted in as a member of the Prince Street Gallery, which is at 530 W. 25th street th floor, New York City.

Exhibitions

2007 August small works invitation Blue Mountain Gallery

2006 August small works invitation Blue Mountain Gallery

2005 August small works invitational Blue Mountain Gallery, New York City

April - May ’ÄúDelusional Landscape’Äù Hebrew Tabernacle, New York City

2003 ’ÄúLandscapes’Äù two-artist show with sister Kate Hughes Rinzler

Market 5 Gallery, Washington, DC

2002 ’ÄúEastern Landscapes’Äù two-artist show with sister Kate Hughes Rinzler California State University’ÄìChannel Islands, Camarillo, CA

2001 ’ÄúDelusional Landscape’Äù paintings and prints,

Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY.

Landscapes,’Äù landscape photographs

Education

Written thesis, on the John Reed Club artists of the 1930s

1968 Columbia University graduate program in art

1967 B.A., painting, Bard College

Art - related employment

Thoughts on my painting, October 2007
There are so many subjects -- story lines -- to pursue in my painting that I don't have enough time to investigate them all. Even though it is later in the game for me as an artist, I am not repeating myself and feel there are ample stories to tell. It is a matter of devoting the necessary time to develop them into completed works, each one of them very different from the previous one. The variety of imagery has broadened recently, moving away from "landscapes" into more "head" pieces, work less referential than landscape and incorporating figurative elements and more flexible use of space and volume.
Some have said that my work is illustration. But more than illustration, it is a willingness to risk saying something about an internal life, and to make work that is completely accessible across cultural and class lines: I hope to catch the attention of the most working-class of viewers. This is what makes the work akin to Outsider art. There is always the likelihood that people don't like what I am saying, find it naieve, adolescent even, but at least it isn't obscure.
There are obvious references to an internal visual life that is brought out into the open through the image. Much of this is revealed in the process of painting itself. Ideas are suggested in the work in progress and brought out and made explicit. If there is a suggestion of an animal, figure, or face, it is made explicit, recognizable to the viewer. Often the painting is begun en plein air as a landscape, spending at least a whole day in one spot but then working in images and ideas not present in the actual landscape. A narrative element is developed in the "landscape" such that it tells a story, often a personal one and sometimes incorporating elements from photos I have taken. Other paintings begin as random sketches from the mind, even from scribbling or a kind of automatic drawing, which is then transformed into a developed image with a story to tell. Some of the resulting incorporated imagery is reminiscent of what the Surrealists did. There is an invitation to the viewer to take a close look at the detail to discover the narrative.

I like imaging my hand holding a pen as if it were a stylus on a plotter, keeping it moving back and forth and watching and modifying the result, an obsessive building up of detail to obtain an overall composition and effect. This parallels the obsessive and repetitive technique of many Outsider artists, some of whom were mentally ill and occupied their minds by bringing out into the world the internal circling around and around. Functioning like a stylus, or a stippler, adds an element of passivity in the process. It also permits endless adjustment in the image. And using 500 lb watercolor paper allows for sculpting form through sanding down and reworking objects such that they gain three-dimentionality, especially towards the completion of the work. Some of the more accidental parts of the image are started with flooding the paper with gum arabic and applying ground pigment directly to the paper, giving a pastel-like quality.
Figures and objects are "pounced" into the painting, a technique used by art forgers such as Eric Hebborn, an artist hero.
A goal is to get a painting to a point where every small change impacts the whole composition; changing a color area slightly brings it into line with all other parts of the painting. Or adding a small figurative element, a person walking a path for example, adds a space and meaning out of proportion to the size of the change. I seek to make lines in the work have a life and interest in itself.

 

 

Copyright    ||    Visit Kate Hughes Rinzler    ||    Email us