sarah hudgins

artist statement

I am an oil painter because it connects me to a proud artistic tradition reaching both forward and backward in time. I integrate archaic and academic techniques with my own vision. I am actively developing my work into larger and more impressive environments. I would like people who view my work to relax and let their eyes slowly explore the lines and colors leading paths through the piece.

I envision an entire room where every surface is transformed. Visitors feel mildly off balance, but comfortable and self-satisfied that they have the strength to keep a steady foothold amidst the movement.

My process includes sketching, writing, painting, sketching, thinking, looking, painting and thinking...not necessarily in that order. Working through my current series, urban landscapes, is a cycle of destroying and restoring balance. I am exploring the impact of neutrality and how color exists in an environment that seems to be colorless. How do form and movement and neutrality impace each other? How well do they co-exist?

My current series came from frustration with the long gray Chicago winters. All I saw were gray rectangles of concrete. I became obsessed with the gray angles that surround me andI began seeing beauty in the urban winter. Looking allowed me to see that the colors are there, they are just much more subtle and woven into the blanket of the city.

As always, I am painting the complex relationships between people and objects: how one pushes into the next, influencing and changing it. I am painting the absolute concept that everything is effected by everything else. Only this time, I am using the buildings and concrete as an infrastructure and the beauty in the grays as my palette.