| At the heart of my work I am interested in group interaction in a given world.
Though I explore painting spaces as formal exercises in color, collective
shape and movement, conceptually my work is bound to ideas of viewing,
natural and artificial boundaries, and community participation. My
paintings are often an abstract envisioning of crowds of people at
events as seen from above. I am interested in the assembling and dispersing
of crowds, the movements of a mass, and the spaces kept or left between
people or groups. Places, events and situations where masses come
together continue to inspire multiple painting explorations.
This current work began with an exploration of parade routes and crowds lining up along them, spilling into the parade space and dispersing at the edges. Observations and research lead me to further explore flow, crowd patterns and group dynamics where people of differing demographics mingle. Within these paintings one can see emerging complexities: colors that indicate a flow of movement through the composition, groups that work together within the whole, forms that have been painted out to leave breathing space and a passage into the crowd. I consider spatial relationships and collective movement as things fall into place along paths, or bump up against the edges created by architectural and natural boundaries existing in our landscape. Emptying the space of these boundaries and pictorial references allows me freedom to focus specifically on the collective shapes and movements of and within a group. Farida Hughes |
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