| While British artist Richard Hoey’s paintings have the swirling energy of many abstract works, they also suggest something quite different: the murmuring of numerous voices beneath each layer. The artist’s work has changed greatly over the years, and is seldom truly abstract. He courageously goes beyond the given and familiar, pioneering new techniques and materials in order to expand his own vision. Heavy, multi-layered surfaces and mixed media prevail in his earlier works, where brushwork is exaggerated by pigmented spackle that resembles vigorously worked cement. These works reference a moment when numerous artists used an exaggerated physicality to circumvent the emotionalism of Abstract Expressionism—from the Fontana’s punctured canvases to Dubuffet surfacing his with dirt. In paintings such as The Orchid Room, the works look like scratchings on an old, stained plaster wall. Rather than being tough and raw, the effect is delicate. | 
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Suzie Walshe
Richard Hoey is a London-based artist. An exhibition of his latest work is on view at Gruen Galleries Chicago, until October 5.
Richard Hoey, Aerial, 2008. Enamel/oil and silicone on canvas, 100 x 100 cm. Courtesy of the artist.While British artist Richard Hoey’s paintings have the swirling energy of many abstract works, they also suggest something quite different: the murmuring of numerous voices beneath each layer. The artist’s work has changed greatly over the years, and is seldom truly abstract. He courageously goes beyond the given and familiar, pioneering new techniques and materials in order to expand his own vision. Heavy, multi-layered surfaces and mixed media prevail in his earlier works, where brushwork is exaggerated by pigmented spackle that resembles vigorously worked cement. These works reference a moment when numerous artists used an exaggerated physicality to circumvent the emotionalism of Abstract Expressionism—from the Fontana’s punctured canvases to Dubuffet surfacing his with dirt.
In paintings such as The Orchid Room, the works look like scratchings on an old, stained plaster wall. Rather than being tough and raw, the effect is delicate. In contrast, recent pictures from 2008 are the freest and wildest the artist has ever done. Hoey’s cosmological conceptions marry together the context and knowledge of years of work with explosions of lush color that evoke the spatial atmospherics of 19th-century landscape paintings by Frederic Edwin. Their illusionism is tempered by viscous paint, applied in subtle, rapid brushstrokes and lustrous pools.
In the case of Aerial (2008), it is a shock of wet-on-wet swirls, aquamarine blue and antique white with flecks of chartreuse that dominate the painting’s left side. The composition suggests an avenging presence hurtling toward slates of midnight blue and black, which culminates in an apocalyptic void at the painting’s center. The arrangement suggests an artist who has always blended a proclivity for visual drama with a keen interest in the physicality of paint. Recent works, specifically Aerial and Celestial Lights, reference the cosmological phenomenon of dark energy—a hypothetical form of energy that permeates all of space and tends to increase the expansion of the universe. These layered “universescapes” express a creative force within—and beyond—the physical constraints of the canvas, where each ripple and crack acts as an internal explosion. Working with layers of paints and interacting glazes, the paintings often use gravity as the force for directing the movement of the paint on the surface.
In Dark Matter, we can physically see how works are completed at different angles, which allow a static painting to remain in a state of constant flux. Hoey quotes Charles Mingus who states, “I’m trying to play the truth of what I am…the reason it’s difficult is because I’m changing all the time.” Hoey’s works spell out a classical theme, time and place of observation and creation. The results often evoke nature and humanity—from sunlight flickering amid the surface of a deep and threatening ocean to an epic cosmos. The use of vibrant and spatial colors suggests a positive sense of humanity, an effect that is uncompromising and thought-provoking. At first glance the works appear two-dimensional, but this is just an optical illusion—Hoey questions the very nature of painting by producing works of ambiguous and sculptural shapes within the canvas. Brush strokes all but disappear within a membrane of color, and the slightest scratch or incision becomes crucial. As viewers move closer to the surfaces, the web of brush strokes encloses them like traces of the artist’s own hands.
Hoey’s epic compositions are executed on a scale that can’t be ignored or underestimated. The considerably large proportion of his work is utilized in order to overwhelm the viewer, or, in Hoey’s words, to make the viewer feel enveloped within the painting. His experiments are not only in color and surface—but also proportion and scale. Working on several paintings at a time, he uses enamel paint that is repeatedly layered onto the canvas. In order to achieve the kind of density he wants, the works undergo several molecular transformations, where it is necessary to build the surface in a traditional way by superimposing layers of paint and exploiting the transparency and opacity of the medium. This working process also acts as a metaphor. The repeated building up and breaking down of the paint is similar to a dig, making his artistic process an archeological excavation—as though the image was unearthed, soon brought to light.
Hoey employs an open composition, frequently building around a free-abstract central image, while also stressing the picture edge. These motifs float within the canvas frames, suggesting a threshold or portal at the center of the painting that opens up a defined depth of gesture and color. Building form from within, he contrasts the saturation and density of the paint to create a rising and swelling motion related to marine or landscape images. The technique of staining the canvases with poured paint involves a great amount of risk, as there is no chance for correction. This risk has proved to be the decisive catalyst to the development of his style. For example, the work Celestial Lights is an orchestrated visual experience of textured earth tones that shimmer and radiate. The large areas saturated with brilliant color alternate with deep layers of thinned paints in an idiosyncratic staining technique that creates color compositions of a delicate, ethereal quality. Each of these reductive compositions suggests an infinite space illuminated by hazy light. A bold brush stroke or two running along one edge of the canvas or in a corner is a formalist device Hoey often employs as a means to define and contain the space.
Although recent works appear to have evolved toward a whole new territory for the artist, they actually represent a distillation of themes and ideas that were already evident in his earlier work. These include an exploration of the elements of earth, water, fire, and air, interest in both northern and classical myth, and concern for what man does to man. Key to these works is the tension created between description and the desire to suggest or evoke generalized, symbolic forms. Overall, these works represent a new confidence and maturity in the artist’s handling of paint and evocation of his subjects. Hoey’s ambition for painting as a carrier of meanings that are accessible to all is evidence of his own immersion in the culture of painting and its potential for transformation.
More than anything, Hoey’s works should be interpreted as attempted answers to the question of whether painting today can encompass human experience and be able to address life in all its absurdity, complexity, and tragedy.
