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Steamboat Magazine

Monroe Hodder - Romancing Color

02/21/2013 05:41PM ● By Grant Johnson

March 8 - April 27, 2013

Opening Reception: Friday March 8, 6-9pm

On view with Aaron Karp - Indra's Pearls and James Marshall - The Liminal Object

"My paintings are grounded in a structure of stripes, a repetitive pattern that edges one layer against the next and gives an evenness of attention to the surface of the painting.   While my work is not narrative, it is rooted in metaphor, in a personal expression of fantasy, myth, and belief. A vigorous romanticism seems to take over as I progress through a painting and become immersed in the interplay of color, texture and light.  Colors blend and meld before my eyes, then abruptly challenge each other with dueling chromas, splashing across borders and dripping down the canvas. Paint is sometimes thickly kneaded into crusty piles; at other times the canvas seems drenched in liquid pools. I search for a palpable atmosphere that seems to verge on dissolution.  I trust the underlying geometry to hold as a vessel for this pulsating whirlwind of paint. I know the painting is complete when color itself provides a moving balance, a structure of perpetual motion across the surface of the painting. 

The essence of my work is pure color, as Matisse understood it, color that “must serve expression.”  Like Matisse, I want to express “the nearly religious feeling” that emanates from “sensuous life, from flowers, figures, fruit on a table, and warmth of the sun.”  Different environments challenge me to seek new relationships of color. As I walk the streets of New York, I find an almost incandescent fury in the blur of noise and traffic.   And then I return to Colorado, to a mood of contemplation filled with snow and sun, mountains and rivers, long walks in the woods and, most of all, the slow revolution of the changing lights of day.  Here my work emanates from listening to the quiet cadences of nature."

Monroe Hodder - January, 2013

William Havu Gallery

1040 Cherokee Street, Denver, Colorado, 80204

303-893-2360 | E: [email protected]

www.williamhavugallery.com