Hugh Margerum

From a statement by the artist:

I make abstract paintings about things I notice in nature and in everyday life. I’m particularly interested in contradictions—the way opposing things can exist together, and how we’re constantly trying to reconcile them. This tension between opposites shows up everywhere: in nature, in philosophy, in art, and in the complicated business of being human.

Painting is my way of thinking about those things. I’m not trying to illustrate an idea so much as to discover something through the process of making. I look, I wonder, I make things, I change them, and sometimes I stumble onto something that feels real. For me, making a painting is an attempt to find and re-present some of the poetry that already exists in the world around us.

There is also something appealing to me about the old-fashioned physicality of making art by hand in a digital age. I love oil paint for what it can do—the depth and richness of its color, its sensuality, and its strange ability to be both an image and a physical object. I try to exploit those qualities rather than simply use paint as a means of making a picture.

In the end, my paintings are a form of research. They are my way of looking closely at nature, at everyday experience, and at the curious nature of human-ness—and trying to make something out of what I find.