Shara Hughes’ new paintings present layers of abstracted, actual and pictorial space, all in search of simplicity.

These clouded windows of ambiguous form, pattern, and texture are like vibrated, vibrant drawings, plied with multiple mediums. The direct intention instilled in each mark empowers these paintings with a sense of focused purpose, directness, yet they depict suggestions of open space, floating moons, flowing rivers, melting snow. The indirect and the slow burning.

Hughes explores these ideas as she quickly grasps new ways of applying paint. Idea becomes form, form becomes an idea, image becomes both. The result is a mix of peace and purpose; material and place; raw canvas and painted surface. Transparency and brick wall.

In these works past and future disappear. There is only the present. Invention, intention, playfulness and trust. All happen then/now. Stop to go.

Shara Hughes (b. 1981 in Atlanta, GA) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Previous solo exhibitions include Museum of Contemporary Art, Georgia, Atlanta, GA; Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta, GA; American Contemporary, New York, NY; P-r-i-m-e-t-i-m-e, Brooklyn, NY; Metroquadro, Turin, IT; Galerie Mikael Anderson, Copenhagen, DE; and Rivington Arms, New York, NY. Hughes was the recipient of the MoCA GA Working Artist Project Grant for 2012/2013. She studied at Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME.