February 19-March 27, 2010

Steven Hudson -- Tumult

Overboard, 2009 oil on canvas 45" x 57"


Steven Hudson returns to the Peter Miller Gallery with a series of new paintings. His figures, never conventionally beautiful, continue to capture our attention. Pulpy and flawed, they are the heroes of unexplained dramas. They are survivors inhabiting desolate landscapes colored with explosive sunsets, compelled to continue.

Gallery hours: Tuesday through Saturday from 10 to 5:30.

My dramas offer a fantastic view of humanity existing after some unspecified cataclysm. Here, the apocalypse is a conceit dulled by reiteration. Revealed in an unforgiving light, the pulpy and flawed inhabitants convulse or grope about, naked, as if on display. Glances are averted, gestures are uneasy. Names and places are no more. Their time of judgment has long been forgotten. Littered about them are token remnants of our own materialism, its meaning stripped away and replaced with something cryptic.

The compositions don’t hint at a solution that will provide a safe haven for these dispossessed beings or assure them a better outcome. Instead they reside in a state of tension somewhere between waterboarding and restless leg syndrome. Outside of order and amid this contrived world, few narrations jell. The social architecture that currently keeps the anxiety of an age in check is gone. Remaining after the end the characters set out, among debris, arbitrarily remapping the simmering abyss. Brutish and vaguely comic they embody the dilemma of investing the world with a new possible relevance.

Steven Hudson, 2010


Land and Water, 2003 oil on panel 24" x 36"


Ort 2009 oil on canvas 45" x 57"


Restless 2009 oil on canvas 45" x 55"


Tumult 2009 oil on canvas 45" x 56"


Walk 2007 oil on panel 15 1/2" x 18"