Projects
Inter-disciplinary explorations widen the confines of painting in my studio practice: such as my forays into animated performing light-box art, ceiling installations, and three-dimensional form. See below:
Below the Surface
Experience the experimental, collaborative, art and music performance by visual artist Farida Hughes and classical percussionist Matthew Keown. This novel evening of visual art and music uses inspiration from both the generative and erosive power of volcanic activity and the creative forces of nature to parallel the act of artistic creation. It was first performed on Friday, March 31, 2023, at Lovely Lane UMC, Baltimore. The next performance will be at Baltimore Theater Project, February 1, 2025. Save the date!
Farida’s artwork “Below the Surface” is an inter-disciplinary piece combining works on paper backlit with an engineered light performance. Perforated pages are layered with hand-dyed and hand-painted papers and illuminated via LED lights. The light-box program performs in tandem with the “Below the Surface” musical score. Inquire to schedule a performance or request to see Farida’s light-box artwork.
Seeing Through Masks
Three-dimensional hanging composition contains three entry points enabling viewers to step inside and experience the emotional nuances. The content addresses the idea of masking in ways in which we choose to hide and reveal ourselves in societies, and how it may feel to be a new person in a community or culture. Mesh and netting is embedded into resin to form the masks, allowing distorted views from the inside, plays of light and shadow, and buoyant shifting considerations of what is in proximity to one’s physical body and senses. The piece invites contemplation on how we inhabit different worlds.
Resin, oil paint, mesh, fabric, found objects, 60 x 60 x 96”, 2018-2022. First exhibited in “Between the Stripes, Under the Stars”, at the Catherine G. Murphy Gallery, St. Catherine’s University, St. Paul, MN, 2022.
ArtHounds review on Minnesota Public Radio
Photos by Rik Sferra.
ALL TERRAIN, Watercolor on canvas, 48 x 96″, 2016-19 | Available in studio
ALL TERRAIN
This extra large watercolor painting was begun on the flats of the Wisconsin River using the river water and the found indentations and dimples in the sand to begin the initial puddles of the composition. This direct physical interaction between the art materials and the existing land is what drives my work in landscape. I begin with what I encounter, and intuition and human connection to place directs the process of a work.
This painting can be installed vertically or horizontally, as shown. It is available!
Details of All Terrain in the studio
scarves
Digitally printed scarves based on details of original art by Farida Hughes at 23 Roses Designs. These are one way to acquire multiples made by the artist, and they are wearable! For more information and to shop directly visit the online store: 23rosesdesigns.com.
Want to know where the 23 Roses Designs brand name comes from? 23 was the street number of an old studio as well as the highway near where I grew up in New Jersey, and Rose is my middle name. :)
VIGIL OVALS INSTALLATION VIEW
This project of Vigil paintings is intended to offer a moment of reverence and remembrance for lives lived and lost. With this work I invite the viewer to experience color and light and hold in memory and reverence our collective human losses and collective gratitude.
Healing is a necessary human experience. Our collective conscience has been trying to find healing in two extremes: one, with the coronavirus emphasizing death in isolation, we are robbed of healing, of processing forward with the dead, moving as a group with a body from one realm (life) into the other (death); and, two, as we come together in protest to voice concern over injustices in our communities we are, among other notions, moving en masse together to heal. Throughout history and today the candlelight vigil is used as a dignified way of uniting a community through honoring, celebrating, memorializing, showing support for a cause, and for collective healing.
This project was from a solo exhibition in 2021 at the Athenaeum Gallery in Alexandria, Virginia. Each piece is painted on a surface of Dibond which I cut with a CNC router. On the verso, each is painted with flashe paint in a ruby rouge color to cast a subtle glow on the wall behind.
Of the initial 30, many are still available for purchase. Click the button to link to store site.
scholarship fund contribution
In 2017 100% of the sale of this painting was donated to the Philando Castile Memorial Scholarship Fund of the Central High Foundation, St. Paul, Minnesota. Thank you to all who worked to support this effort. Read the full text here.
