“Everyone knows what a landscape looks like—there is an entire tradition of painting that informs our expectations. I wondered how I could take something that is seemingly so known and make it mine, while still getting all the satisfaction of painting, and the history of painting, in one”
Executed in 2018, Shara Hughes’ Where The Sky Ends is a uniquely beguiling example of the artist’s acclaimed landscape vision. Employing carefully choreographed land, sea and sky, Hughes utilises a range of medium and techniques to set the painting in graceful motion. The fantastical elements of her oeuvre come alive in the present work, portraying a seascape bathed in purple and blue hues and dotted with swaths from a daring kaleidoscope of colour. Indeed, the present work has the uncanny ability to promote peace, silence and a sense of aloneness, against the backdrop of a roaring sea and the elements of mother nature, perhaps a nod to the disorder that we experience in our contemporary world. Experimenting with juxtaposing patterns and the chemical contrast between oil and acrylic paint, the artist creates a striking landscape that is at once chaotic and ordered, visually extrovert yet emotionally introverted and psychologically intimate.
IMAGE © BRIDGEMAN IMAGES
The fragmented view, signature of the artist’s landscapes, tilts our orientation into otherworldly horizons, only to encourage the viewer back to the reality of the painting; as Jason Stops observes, Hughes’ landscapes “reveal mystifying breach between our own subjection perceptions, our memories of lived event and reality” (Jason Stopa, “Tripping Out: The Upended Landscapes of Shara Hughes”, Hyperallgergic, 5 March 2016). In particular, Hughes’ artistic production is distinguished by its entrancing communion of vision, nature, and psychological depth. In the artist’s own words: “I think that nature reflects emotions in so many ways. Beauty, pain, peace, sadness can all be seen in one day with the passing of time or with a weather pattern. Nature is constantly changing, you will never see the same flower twice in the exact same way. The light changes; its growing, or dying, and moving. The very reflective of humans and psychologu” (Shara Hughes quoted in: Emily Steer, “Shara Hughes Uses Painting to Reflect the Turbulent Human Mind”, Elephant, 16 March 2020).
Quilting techniques together throughout her celebrated career, Hughes uses spray paint, dye, oil paint, enamels, air brushes and markers to create her worlds. Beginning her process by dying raw canvas, Hughes subsequently works abstractly with acrylic paint as it dries quickly, after which the space presents itself to the artist, unfolding and unfurling with every mark and gesture. For Hughes, landscapes as a subject matter serve as an access point to engage with perception and the subject of painting itself. With this in mind, her environs are not landscapes from her past or memory, they are in a sense placeless compositions; unknown visual inventions that are democratic and autonomous.
Turning from interiors to landscapes in 2015, Hughes’ fantastical palettes are reminiscent of the vivid Fauvism of Henri Matisse and the rich saturation of David Hockney. Her elaborate structural or decorative framing devices, further recall Gustav Klimt’s plein air works. Hughes’ unique approach to landscape painting gained the attention of the art world after the 2017 Whitney Biennial, and she has since enjoyed several solo museum exhibitions, including an upcoming show at the Kunstmuseum Luzern, Switzerland, in late 2022. A testament to the calibre of her creative output, Hughes’ work belongs in prominent collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Rachofsky Collection, Dallas; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington; and the Whitney Museum of Art, New York. Hughes lives and works in Brooklyn.