we are super excited to open three exhibitions in march for john folsom, melinda hackett and kiki slaughter. each artist has been working extra hard in their studios to create a new body of work. big thank you to john, melinda and kiki for all their efforts.
john folsom is a multimedia artist born and raised in paducah, kentucky. he received his bachelor of fine arts in cinema and photography from southern illinois university. his work explores the potential of photographic images through the intersection of digital media and painting. known primarily for creating works that relate to the genre of grand landscape, folsom has also produced sound pieces utilizing field recordings and vinyl records. his work resides in the permanent collections of the ogden museum of southern art, new orleans, louisiana, the gibbes museum in charleston, south carolina, and telfair museums in savannah, georgia as well as many private and public collections.
“my practice is concerned with constructing the ideal landscape, a representation of land that is both alluring and fictional. these environments have been termed “post-sublime” having both a sense of glory and irony. the panels function as giant billboards heralding a far away destination encouraging viewers to explore the natural world. sometimes the area photographed is relatively pristine and other times is under threat from onset erosion due to man made development. viewers with a sense of yearning and romanticism move the images beyond their specific geography to a place born of personal memory. this has happened on a few occasions where an image taken at a certain place is moved by the mind of the viewer to someplace closer to home. by this measure these images do not exist in the real world but are dependant upon the viewers’ definition to achieve their sense of place.”
the process involved with creating john’s work is multi-tiered. he first travels and documents the landscape with his digital camera and works with the image utilising photographic software. after this step the image is broken into the grid and each tile is printed individually using the epson stylus 4800. the image is then assembled like a giant jigsaw puzzle and adhered to a wooden support. he then paints on the surface of the photographic paper using traditional oils and seals the piece with wax medium.
melinda hackett’s paintings depict playful clusters of layered biomorphic shapes. the elements in her fantastical compositions collapse interior and exterior space, what she calls views from the telescope and views from the microscope. hackett describes her paintings as representing nonlinear time. she imagines her shapes resembling plants, celestial bodies, and creatures, moving through the picture plane at various speeds. hackett received a ba from hobart and william smith colleges and an mfa from parsons school of design. she has cited influences such as max beckmann, arthur dove and elizabeth murray. her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at venues such as the aldrich contemporary art museum and parrish art museum.
“my paintings refer to organic space and unfixed time. to call them landscapes would be misleading since they are poetic inventions of my imagination, and reference the world of nature rather than depict it literally. one of my purposes in making paintings is to transport the viewer to a necessarily foreign place, where nature can be experienced without knowing it fully, and where reality is communicated through the senses. i am involved in the play of interior and exterior space. on one hand; interior, intimate, house, personal-and on the other; exterior, immense, universe, cosmos. my paintings represent both states, the near, the far, the view through a telescope, the view through a microscope, the sheltering sky, the intimate forest. my paintings create worlds full of images that float, hover, creep, spin, hang, roll or sleep in corners.
the images come from an internal source. they contain a vital impulse, and are alive as if subjected to breezes, weather and climatic conditions. my paintings represent states of non linear time. it is less that a singular event is taking place than that a group of different objects are moving through the picture plane at various rates of speed and in opposite directions, some gliding slowly and others whirring as if in a blender. nature is not in a state of decay, nor is it symbolic or nostalgic for the past. the paintings are largely fragmentary in that they exist in one moment of time, so do they exist in one torn swatch of space. there is a sense that the activity continues outside the borders of the paintings as the forms flirt with the edges or get chopped off by them. some forms are only just coming into being while others have already ‘come out’ and some just like to watch. by virtue of their inability to be fully identified, they remain in the realm of the poetic, a sum of images to form a whole. they are meant to be experienced fully through the eye of the viewer.”
kiki slaughter
kiki slaughter grew up in charlottesville, va and studied painting at the university of virginia. she pours, scrapes, layers and otherwise manipulates paint on the canvas to create works that are rich in both color and texture. kiki is also very inspired by her visual surroundings. she strives to interpret and record her impressions of the world around her through her use of color and texture. although her works are entirely abstract, each piece maintains subtle characteristics from its source of inspiration. paint is her method and her muse - she finds inspiration in the very act of painting and also draw elements from the world around her, especially nature. in 2012 she was named a southern tastemaker by garden & gun magazine.
all available work by each artist can be viewed on our website under their individual tabs including sizing + pricing. hidell brooks gallery is by appointment. please call the gallery if you have any further questions.