Castles in Spain - a few words on the exhibition
Azucarera is pleased to present Harry Hancock’s debut solo show, “Castles in Spain”. Vivid, colorful paintings and drawings inspired by the Spanish landscape give you a look through this young artist’s eyes at a world sometimes in harmony, at other times in alarming and surreal conflict with itself...
The title means ‘fanciful or impractical notions’ or ‘daydreams’ and describes the artworks’ detached, contemplative tone. The images’ other-worldliness derives from the emptiness of the scenes, but for one animated feature – perhaps a bouncing tree, a visionary explorer or an apoplectic bystander. The characters have been placed in incongruous situations, and their reaction to their surroundings forms the emotional hub of each piece.
In this they reflect the artist behind them: Harry Hancock was born in London in 1981, and moved to Florence in 1999 to train as a portrait painter. After this, he completed his BA at the Courtauld Institute in London, and moved to New York, where he has been painting and teaching Latin since 2006. Many of his artworks express this sense of being uprooted, and re-planted in different cultural contexts.
Using traditional materials and techniques, and using a figurative and sometimes decorative vocabulary, Harry Hancock has created an original artistic style that exploits the oil medium’s full potential in new, creative ways. Hancock is an oil painter in the traditional sense, but one whose experience of the world is echoed in his technique – for example, juxtapositions of contrasting motifs evoke the haphazard, high-speed and hybridized experience of culture in today’s world, and the way in which we perceive it. While committed to the visual language created by the Old Masters, he now draws influence from Outsider art, Himalayan art and Nature.
The title means ‘fanciful or impractical notions’ or ‘daydreams’ and describes the artworks’ detached, contemplative tone. The images’ other-worldliness derives from the emptiness of the scenes, but for one animated feature – perhaps a bouncing tree, a visionary explorer or an apoplectic bystander. The characters have been placed in incongruous situations, and their reaction to their surroundings forms the emotional hub of each piece.
In this they reflect the artist behind them: Harry Hancock was born in London in 1981, and moved to Florence in 1999 to train as a portrait painter. After this, he completed his BA at the Courtauld Institute in London, and moved to New York, where he has been painting and teaching Latin since 2006. Many of his artworks express this sense of being uprooted, and re-planted in different cultural contexts.
Using traditional materials and techniques, and using a figurative and sometimes decorative vocabulary, Harry Hancock has created an original artistic style that exploits the oil medium’s full potential in new, creative ways. Hancock is an oil painter in the traditional sense, but one whose experience of the world is echoed in his technique – for example, juxtapositions of contrasting motifs evoke the haphazard, high-speed and hybridized experience of culture in today’s world, and the way in which we perceive it. While committed to the visual language created by the Old Masters, he now draws influence from Outsider art, Himalayan art and Nature.
posted by Harry Hancock at
10:55 AM
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