Brian Paul Hoover – Quetzalcoatl’s Return
Oil on Canvas
I received my undergraduate training in art from the Cleveland Institute of Art and then earned a BFA from Kutztown University, PA in 1988. I receive an MFA in printmaking from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1990. I am currently Chair of the Art Department at Southern Utah University in Cedar City, Utah. I teach Painting, Printmaking and Drawing. My work has always revolved around my fascination with religion and other cultures. Myth, magic, and the spiritual are key themes in my work. I have always been formally fascinated with early Christian and Islamic works - gold leaf and pattern. My work is often described as surreal, but I associate myself more with a group of artists working in late 19th century Europe called the Symbolists. Like the Symbolists, mythical and even quasi-religious themes occur in my work- usually humans and animals acting out some ambiguous but hopefully fascinating narrative. I approach my work in two distinctive ways. One, I begin a painting by spilling and splashing liquefied paint onto the surface of a canvas, not unlike an abstract expressionist would. After the paint dries I begin to "Rorschach" images that my subconscious sees in the abstract puddles of paint. I then try to render in a more traditional manner - without completely disturbing the freshness of the spill - a representational narrative that often equals the strangeness and absurdity of dreams. Beauty, levity and horror are often combined in what I hope to be a seductive if not disturbing image. The other approach is almost the polar opposite of the first, which really only started after my move from Pennsylvania to Utah. This is much more of an "academic" approach to painting. I first conceptualize an idea in a pencil sketch, then a drawing with a full range of values and then the final painting. I find working both ways has opened up many more visual possibilities and my ideas for paintings are outweighed by the time that I actually get to paint. |
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