EXHIBITIONS
"The first thing most people will notice about the paintings of Curtis Hoekzema
is his distinctively unique style. Using his keen talent for focused observation
and witty interpretation, Hoekzema has a natural sense when it comes to capturing
the essence of his subject. In this exhibition Hoekzema explores a wide variety
of subjects, often revisiting works begun earlier, and it is fascinating to
see how the artist’s mind works. Angelenos familiar with the Arroyo Seco parkway
will immediately recognize how Hoekzema is able to portray the experience of
driving along that iconic freeway landscape. A cat lounging in the shade of
a tree is the inspiration for investigating the patterning of light and shadows
through the foliage and the hatch marks of the tree bark. Blossoms and flower
petals, still lifes, bulbous rock formations, studio figure models, all pass
through the artist’s eye and are stripped down to shape, pattern and color,
the essential building blocks of Hoekzema’s paintings. These are quirky, cheerful
and immensely likeable works that will appeal to anyone who appreciates the
art of painting."
The Gardens
November 17, 2010 - December 24, 2010
Desert Garden #2 - 24" x 20" - one of the oils in the FIG exhibition "The gardens" a series of oil paintings made at the Huntington Gardens in Los Angeles, California.
The Gardens: Recent Paintings
First Independent Gallery (FIG)
2525 Michigan Ave., G-6
Bergamot Station Santa
Monica, CA USA 90404
Curtis Hoekzema's
statement
EXHIBITION STATEMENT
"The Gardens
Gardens are about paradise. Art is, in essence, about joy.
The opportunity of my being able to draw and paint in the Huntington Library's
Gardens presented itself last year through the kind auspices of the Huntington
Library Garden Artist's Guild. As an Artist's Guild member I was permitted
to work during non-public hours, early in the mornings, and all day Tuesday.
I wish to express my gratitude to the Huntington Library and its staff for their
generous hospitality.
I was initially most attracted toward working in the desert gardens, with its
rich and diverse forms of cacti and succulents, whose sculptural forms already
suggest the product of some wildly eccentric and visionary imagination. There
was also the rose garden, the tropical garden, the palm garden, the Japanese
garden and the recently developed Chinese garden. In exploring the grounds I
was able to select those motifs which presented the most evocative possibilities
and the greatest painterly challenges. I did numerous sketches and followed
them with a series of oils on canvas, most of which were painted on site but
then further developed in the studio.
The cactus garden is amazing. To make a painting there is to indulge in a vocabulary
of the surreal. This, together with my amateur standing as a cactus and succulent
collector, made work in the desert gardens a real delight. The color that one
experiences there comes about as an almost daily shock and surprise and as the
blooms present themselves in the changing light, it is a reminder that in painting
color is the truest, and most direct instrument of the emotions.
The emotion I most value is unique - the aesthetic emotion, the one that might
give you a bit of a shudder or maybe make you catch your breath. If I can share
anything like this with the viewer, I would be satisfied with the effort.
The subjects have been chosen foremost for the opportunity they afford for me
to make a richly evocative color statement. They also have been chosen for their
potential for the development of a complex interplay of space - foreground engaged
with background and both ultimately joining to herald the surface of the painting
itself. While these paintings are primarily about the intuitive they also may
function as a little bit of an intellectual puzzle - how do these shapes speak
to each other, and what do they say? The paintings are clearly about beauty
but, not so obviously, a beauty that has in its nature some whiff of danger
about it.
These works are consciously devoid of any sociological or political content.
They are conceptual in that they are conceived but do not require explanation.
They are interactive if the viewer allows them to be. Enjoy."
Curtis Hoekzema