Paul Hunter - Artist Statement

The expression of luminosity is my artistic goal.

I have painted minimalist landscape paintings, abstract meditative compositions and views of New I have also created sculptures, prints and drawings. 

My Libretto works feature multiple layers of lines, each drawn and painted by hand onto shimmering gold and metal leafed canvasses. Etched into wet transparent paint, these lines allow the intensive glow and energy of the underlying gold and metal to reflect outwards through the paint. The gently undulating variations and linear rhythms of the lines create a sensation of calm. Merging reading, writing and painting, these works invite contemplative looking over time comparable to listening to a musical score.

My Confinement Gardens series developed during the Covid 19 pandemic. As the virus was surging in New York, walking through the city’s public parks and gardens, the powerful emergence of waves of flowers during the spring blooming was a hopeful sign despite everything. Impressions of my garden walks emerged in my usually nonfigurative Libretto compositions, and I began adding floral and leaf forms to my abstract linear patterns. 

The carved wood sculptures in the Timber series evolved from my earlier minimalist landscape paintings and are also inspired by light and nature. In these sculptures I strive to express the inner power, strength and expansive potential of the original trees, thwarted as they are by having been reduced to construction lumber. Working with my deceased father’s tools, I carve deep into the planed lumber following the linear grain of the wood in search of the branches enclosed inside the beams to free the tree within. The wood is stained and sealed. The knots where the sap used to run mark where the branches were amputated and are sealed in luminous 23 K gold leaf. 

My current hammered Copper series is created by hammering and painting on thin sheets of copper. These undulating low-reliefs hang directly on the wall. Forming the copper sheets feels like sculpting directly into light as I pound the metal to raise, elongate and imprint textures onto its surface. Though their overall compositions are abstract, these low-reliefs might suggest the geography of valleys and tree-topped ridges, aerial views of desert terrains, rock formations or oceanographic swells. These sites evoke pristine vistas and the tradition of Romantic landscape painting whose beauty makes it seem inconceivable that these panoramas are so threatened by our increasingly chaotic climate. Working on copper sheets rather than canvas allows for their hammered edges to crimp, fold, rise and curve. I use this technique and malleable material to draw attention to the thin living crust of the earth and our apocalyptic precarity. The translucent tonal colors that I paint over this luminous topography reflect the metal's light and energy outwards and creates a dialogue between light and form. This gleaming metal, radiating both light and heat, conveys the increase in temperature extremes across the world and express my anxiety about our climate. Copper, a fairly common element, has been mined, extracted and hammered since pre-historic times. Modern industrial copper mining is extremely damaging to the environment, though once smelted, copper can be recycled indefinitely. The sheets I use are industrial discards.

Born in Paris to Canadian parents, I grew up in Quebec City, earned a BAC at Laval University and a MFA at Concordia University in Montreal, and moved to New York City, where I continue to work in my Harlem studio.