"Ms. Hughes' contribution to the present is vital because she combines these historical traditions with current ones […] There are plenty of nods to historical precedents, and yet Ms. Hughes' paintings look spontaneous and unaffected, as if, paradoxically, she has done no homework at all."
—Martha Schwendener
Painted in 2018, Cozy Crescent is a remarkable example of Shara Hughes’ unique ability to summon landscapes of her imagination. Walking the footsteps of such diverse artistic forebears as Vincent van Gogh, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Georgia O’Keeffe, Hughes offers us a vista that reveals itself from an intimate perspective. Enlivened by animated brushstrokes and daubs of paint, planes of luminous color coalesce into a compact landscape illuminated by a glowing moon. The saturated tones of Fauvism here blend with the angularity and darker psychological elements of German Expressionism as Hughes relishes in the fine line between abstraction and figuration.
"Landscapes opened a whole new world for me, one that was awesome and exciting."
—Shara Hughes
Hughes embraced the landscape theme in 2014 after years of devoting her practice to highly representational and detailed interiors, shifting to a more “instinctual” and “spontaneous” painting philosophy. “These works begin with no particular idea in mind—no title, no roadmap,” Museum of Modern Art curator Mia Locks commented following a visit to Hughes’ studio in 2018, elaborating, “instead, she starts by making aimless marks on a blank canvas, without any preconceived notion of what they will become. Pouring, splashing, spraying, dripping, churning, or scraping—there are innumerable physical actions Hughes might use as she negotiates form through paint. Her initial mindset is open; she lets herself play.”i
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Rising Moon in the Stafelalp, 1917
Landscape paintings such as the present one refract art historical precedents through a lens that feels resolutely contemporary–not unlike artists such as Matthew Wong. Channeling antecedents such as Karl Schmidt-Rotluff’s Rising Moon, 1912, or Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Rising Moon in the Stafelalp, 1917, the present painting draws us into a dramatic landscape with a glowing moon looming large in the distance. The dense landscape also calls to mind the painterly solidity found within Georgia O’Keeffe’s New Mexico canvases, such as Black Mesa Landscape, New Mexico / Out Back of Marie’sII, 1930, in which mountain formations interlace within a tug of war of figuration and abstraction.
Hughes works directly from her imagination, avoiding all physical reference points and premature planning. As she explained, “I don’t have any plans when I start a landscape; it is usually very subconscious and intuitive. I merely play around with color and texture, whether it’s a work on paper, or a painting, and then something clicks and I start to organize it into a landscape that doesn’t necessarily identify with a specific place.”ii Playing with perspective, the artist knits together fragments of multiple imagined landscapes and planes of abstract color.
"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."
—Shara Hughes
Adopting an intuitive approach to her un-planned paintings, Hughes’s vibrant compositions explore what the artist describes as ‘invented landscapes’—placeless places that resonate with emotional depth and posses a universal appeal, as her stratospheric rise since her 2017 Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial debut would suggest.
i Mia Locks, “Working Tension: On Shara Hughes’s Landscapes,” Shara Hughes / Landscapes, New York, 2019, p. 11
ii Emily Spicer, “Shara Hughes – interview: ‘I wanted the works to feel like figures you would visit at church, something divine,’’’ Studio International, May 12, 2021, online
Provenance
Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Antiparos Acquired from the above by the present owner
Exhibited
Antiparos, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, At Arm's Length, July 1–August 17, 2019
Literature
Julie Baumgardner, "See How Fast-Rising Painter Shara Hughes Creates Her Imaginative Landscapes," Galerie Magazine, March, 19, 2019, online (studio view illustrated)
Shara Hughes (b. 1981) earned a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and later attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
The artist is best known for her colorful landscapes which bridge a gap between the real and the imagined, and the beautiful and the chaotic. Working intuitively, the artist does not typically pre-plan her canvases. Rather her process involves giving form and shape to her previously applied brushstrokes and reacting to her last applications of paint and color through more painting.
Hughes has participated in numerous group exhibitions, at venues such as FLAG Art Foundation, NY (2023); ICA Miami (2022); De la Cruz Collection (2022); Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk (2021); Dallas Art Museum, Dallas (2019); MASS MoCA, North Adams (2018); and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA (2015). The artist was also included in the 2017 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. Hughes’ work belongs to many prominent museum collections including the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; the Denver Museum of Art, Denver, CO; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; the Jorge M. Perez Collection, Miami, FL; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Atlanta, GA; the M Woods Museum, Beijing, China; the Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ; the Rachofsky Collection, Dallas, TX; the Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO; the Si Shang Art Museum, Beijing, China; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; and the Whitney Museum of Art, New York, NY; among others. Hughes lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
signed, titled, inscribed and dated "Cozy Crescent Shara Hughes 2018 NYC" on the reverse oil and acrylic on canvas 14 x 11 in. (35.6 x 27.9 cm) Painted in 2018.