SKYLAR HUGHES WE'RE ALL STONE RAISING
4TH JUNE - 16TH JULY, 2016
The LODGE Presents: Skylar Hughes, We’re All Stone Raising
“We’re All Stone Raising,” is a body of work on being mindful of our contemporary experience by nodding to the art making process as an affirmation of it.
The work’s basis in the landscape tradition and use of representational imagery serves as a ground for abstraction and suggestion, arriving in a place between these two formal approaches that allows the work to remain present as an open ended space in-and-of itself. Leafy and natural motifs signify both the permanence and temporality of nature’s imprint. Mineral and stone, light and wind, branch and bone - a solid sphere that changes. The play upon these types of images through series and variation is not only an attempt at getting to a totality of vision that exclaims the all-encompassing grandness we exist within, but also points toward art making as a process of progression, one that results from and acts as an acknowledgement of that grasp and being attuned to the present as a point on an ever changing line.
The frankness of their construction reveals how they were made; this and then that, layer upon layer as work over the course of time. The painterly process embodies the struggle of discovery, of seeking and toiling, of confronting and uncovering. Stone Raising serves as a marker of that occupation beyond painting, offering an opportunity to be mindful of that experience as something valuable in it’s own right.
Skylar Hughes is an artist living and working in Los Angeles, CA. He earned a BFA from The Hartford Art School, CT in 2009. The artist’s first major solo exhibition, “One Big Gust of Wind,” was held at the New Britain Museum of American Art, CT in 2013. Skylar has participated in solo and group shows in CT, NY, and CA and has work in numerous public and private collections. “We’re All Stone Raising,” is the artist’s first showing with The LODGE.