Lyrical abstractionism. Color field paintings. Abstract Expressionism. These artistic movements may not have much significance to the average person, yet from the 1950s forward, this method of art making was very influential to Gary Hudson, an artist born in New York who eventually settled in Madison, Georgia, after many years of working and traveling. He was a vibrant individual with a knowledge of art history that he applied to large-scale canvases with radiant color blocks. Hudson wrote, “I decided definitely that I was going to be a painter when I saw my first Jackson Pollock.”
Before his death in 2009, Hudson corresponded with Georgia Museum of Art Director William Eiland about his artwork in relation to his life experiences. From a peacetime accident in 1956 that resulted in paralyzation and honorable discharge from the U.S. Marines, to being in social environments with people like Andy Warhol and T.S. Eliot in 1960s New York, Hudson lived life to the fullest. His breakthrough came in 1969 when his painting Red Rim showed at the Whitney Museum’s Biennial. His style emerged from his desire to show the artist’s hand in the work. He used non-traditional devices to apply the paint, from spatulas to muslin on a stick soaked in paint. One can see in his art the allusions to the upbeat tempo of jazz and avant-garde artists in New York with the shifting lights and darks as well as the relationship between the organic and linear marks.
Hudson and his family, including wife Christie, moved to Jefferson, Georgia, in 1988 to find rest and healing. His interest in historic preservation and small-town America blossomed, and eventually they moved to Madison. In the last years of his life, he enjoyed watching SEC with friends or daydreaming on his front porch with his Jack Russell Terrier Roz. He did not paint as much during this time, but when he did, he created dialogues where “mysterious questions can be posed.” Hudson profoundly wrote,
“Painting… is a reference back to those little tiny fleeting moments in our short lives when we see something at a glance, a ray of light, a color of a flower in its particularity, not its whole, moments in time which register on our eyes to our brain and give a start. The painter in me wants to recall ... those tiny flashes of recognition.” (http://bit.ly/axSkZI)
Please plan a visit to the Madison-Morgan Cultural Center in Madison, just 30 minutes south of Athens, to see “New Works by Gary Hudson,” on view through July 9, 2010. While in Madison, take a stroll along the shaded sidewalks to experience the town like Hudson did. For more information, visit http://bit.ly/aVwsZg.
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