The rich, storied surfaces of Hillary Hogue’s dedicated drawing practice are informed by up close observations and wide, expansive dreaming. Driven by her love of Florida’s plants and wildlife she sees her native environment as starting place for her imagination. Her dedication to craft, and joyful media exploration, her drawings invite viewers to see a world beyond our own.
The large charcoal drawings where started as digital collages and developed into maps to heaven. Combining images inspired by artist Giovanni Piranesi’s fantastical prison series, constellations and the artist’s own photos, she created visual journeys escaping the everyday tedium.
Her more recent works are becoming more improvisational, emerging from a place of playful experimentation that is responsive to both material interactions and her recollections of stories emerging from them. In her work, Hogue aims to listen to the medium instead of trying to force it into a preconceived result. While playing with inks on wet paper, she started to see another world peeking back at her, like a world coming out of a sea of chaos. These processes brought forth both positive and negative results creating all kinds of chaos and gifts. Hogue’s drawings similarly showcase a mix of energies in flux as she embraces the unpredictable.
As Hogue works, she lets the additive and subtractive qualities of mediums on paper guide the fate of each work. She never knows exactly how she will navigate the twists and turns of her invented surfaces, but work to remain open, embracing a process that is continuously generative and freeing. She loves the sense of wonder, surprise and playfulness that comes through her art making. The joy of something coming together is a kind of transcendence from real time and space, even if only for a short while.
Hillary Rumpel Hogue, from Jacksonville, Florida, earned her BFA in drawing from the University of Florida and her MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art. Currently she teaches drawing and painting at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts.
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