W. Jeremy Hughes
Region: South
My work investigates my changing perspective on places that are in perpetual shift such as the home, the landscape, and the complexities of human relationships within these spheres. I am interested in the continuous flux of day-to-day uncertainty. There are certain social conditions gestured to in these works, which are about complacency and the inevitable shock of abrupt change and violence. The paintings are sometimes improvised, at times calculated, and always depict an environment charged with anxiety. This anxiety becomes something palpable, lurking amidst the backdrop of painterly colorist abstraction. For me, painting possesses the immediacy required to communicate a whole experience in just a glimpse. What I seem to be striving for is this collective instead of the parts that may create it. This drive has drawn me to simplify in order to create a more accessible experience. My recent work is a closer examination of objects that represent human beings: houses, vehicles, trailers, and the various means in which we inhabit them. I enjoy emphasizing how these objects represent our personalities. Thus, the object/ground relationship I have discovered has been a solution to defining space/place.
My current paintings derive from the expansive image bank found in the internet, popular films, and other media sources. The paintings deconstruct cultural icons of the public consciousness. The images themselves are artificial, and are executed through references to art history and pop design. The types of scenes often evoke the uncanny, and re-present the strangeness of the familiar fast paced imagery thrown at us by consumer culture. These images stir up uneasiness, in a way that precipitates change and invigorates the viewer.