When the painting leads the way
Trevor Hodgson’s abstracts feature layered geometric shapes
“I think the best paintings are those where I look at the blank white surface for a while, take a brush dipped in colour, make a gesture without command, and let the results begin to excite me. Then I take control.”
That’s what Trevor Hodgson told me when I asked how he begins a painting.
But there’s more than one way to make a painting. Hodgson made a new work, for instance, by painting over an older one, starting with whatever tube of paint happened to be nearby.
It is included in “Mysteries of Form and Colour,” a solo exhibition at Gallery on the Bay.
Hodgson, 87, has been making art all his life, exhibiting locally and internationally.
A former director of the Dundas Valley School of Art, the Dundas resident previously taught at art colleges in England and the United States and at Queen’s University in Kingston.
His honours range from a City of Hamilton Arts Award to Honorary Citizen of New Orleans — he is a talented jazz clarinetist.
A native of Bradford, England, he never ever lost his wonderful
Yorkshire accent and sense of humour.
Hodgson has tackled many subjects, including the human figure and the occasional bigcanvas history narrative. But he also excels at abstracts, the kind that boast layered geometric shapes and colours that are either strong or subdued.
Layered geometrics dominate “Simplicity.” Movement is key. All-over brush strokes running in many directions serve as reminders of the movement of the artist’s brush. Moreover, the relationship between a shape and its neighbour suggests a state of flux. Three right-angled shapes rest above a pale multi-toned one. The L-shaped blue section on the right competes for dominance with a big olive square coming from the left. Which one will take over the composition?
A small olive rectangle on the left edge overlaps the square. The two are partly enclosed by thin dark lines, a suggestion of wholeness. But the big olive rectangle has a ragged lower edge. Is it disintegrating, or forming?
The straight-edged shapes get a visual boost from some circle-based geometric shapes. A large arc of bright pink enlivens the big olive rectangle. A faint vertical rectangle topped with a semicircle hovers ghostlike in the blue section. Is it disappearing, or coming to light?
Sometimes a whole painting becomes a ghost. This happened to “Snakes and Ladders,” which is and is not in this exhibition. Hodgson painted over it to create “Boxes.”
The original painting included a pair of lively green snakes frolicking near steps enclosed in some of the multicoloured squares. An orange circle floated near the top.
“I had recently brought the original home from the gallery and was very unhappy regarding the original so I decided to paint it out,” Hodgson explains.
“The original had been mostly squares so it was natural to paint in that manner over the image with the first colour tube of paint to come to hand. I really hated the new colour which was very unusual for me but seemed to take control and recreated the original image. I still refused to accept it until it finally demanded to exist with or without my approval.”
In “Boxes,” the snakes are gone. The steps remain, but are now barely visible in the rich blue-green squares. The original orange circle is now white with a red outline, and the greyish margin, yellow.
When Hodgson sums up his approach, the Yorkshire humour surfaces.
“In all works of life I am a dreamy person who proceeds in life rarely planned yet hoping for something worthwhile just around the corner.
“So far I have avoided being hit by a bus.”