This fall is a whirlwind for Brooklyn-based Shara Hughes, whose gnarly, psychedelic landscapes invoke David Hockney on an acid trip. A decade spent painting wild flora, fantastical trees, and fiery sunsets has placed Hughes in the pantheon of artists reinventing the familiar strains of Fauvism and Symbolism for an ultra-contemporary take on the natural world. But even with museum shows at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, the Aspen Art Museum, the Garden Museum in London, and the Yuz Museum in Shanghai under her belt, the next few months mark a significant milestone for the 44-year-old native of Marietta, Georgia, who studied art as an undergraduate at the Rhode Island School of Design and then the Skowegan School of Painting and Sculpture.
In September, “Weather Report,” her first New York solo exhibition since 2019, opens at David Kordansky Gallery, featuring nine new large-scale paintings. Two months later, a mid-career survey, “Shara Hughes: Inside Outside,” debuts at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, including both paintings and ceramics. Next year, Hughes will unveil a large-scale mosaic floor installation in JFK International Airport’s Terminal 6, alongside commissions by artists like Charline von Heyl and Candida Alvarez.
Hughes’s success follows a risky transformation 10 years ago, when she began painting landscapes after gaining a reputation as a painter of surreal interior spaces. Inclusion in the 2017 Whitney Biennial, where the curators gave an entire gallery to Hughes’s disorienting outdoor scenes, vaulted her to stardom. There has always been something deeply psychological in her practice—twisty riverbeds and floating moons reflect an inner state that imbue her paintings with pulsing intensity. Her latest body of work, a kind of barometer for her shifting emotional state, is no exception. Hughes sat down with CULTURED in her Greenpoint, Brooklyn studio to discuss getting vulnerable in her work, developing a studio routine, and why painting drunk a few times in college wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
What’s the first thing you do when you enter your studio?
I get here around 10 a.m., turn on the music and give my Boston Terrier, Jellybeans, a treat. If I’m working on a painting, I kind of ignore it for a minute and do some emails. It’s almost as if I’m dating and I want to be like, “I’m not into you right now.” I give Jellybeans her little Kong thing and it’ll keep her busy until she calms down and goes to sleep. By then, I turn my email brain off, and I’m ready to start getting back into the painting.
When do you do your best work?
It’s unpredictable. It takes me a little time to get into it. Typically I get amped up around noon—then I sort of get lost.
If your studio were an animal, what would it be?
It has to be something safe, but tough and playful at the same time. A lioness.
How do you prepare for a gallery exhibition?
I don’t usually have a set idea for a show. It’s about what I’m going through at the time. The works might span a whole year of a production, or a couple of months. A whole year could look like ups and downs of my entire life. But I have no idea what the end product will be. I just want to make the best paintings I can possibly make, and I’m always working up to the last minute.
There are a lot of costs that come with being an artist, and New York is a crazy expensive place to live. Where do you splurge and where do you save?
I splurge on taking cars, like Ubers, home. It’s nice to be alone. I’m a saver and bring my lunch. I don’t order out. My husband usually makes all the meals. So, sometimes it’s leftovers from last night. Recently we’ve been doing wraps.
What’s in your studio fridge?
Celsius energy drinks and protein waters.
What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever done in your studio?
Well during college, I feel like sometimes I used to try to be drunk making paintings. It never worked. It’s such a myth.
Who do you show your work to first?
Outside of Jellybeans, it’s my husband, Austin Eddy, who’s also an artist. His studio is on the same floor as mine.
Do you have any assistants?
I have one part-time assistant, who works remotely. She does emails and admin stuff.
Do you draw your compositions beforehand?
No, and it’s funny. When I get asked to do a mural commission, they always want sketches before, and I say, “I can’t.” I just secretly make the painting, and then show them: “This is it.”
Have you ever destroyed a work to make something new?
I almost destroyed one of the works in this group of paintings. But I saved it. I was telling Austin that I haven’t destroyed a work in so long, but I said, “I think this is it. I’ve lost it. I can’t paint anymore.” Then, I turned it around thankfully. I remember when I was going through the transition from making scenes of interiors a long time ago, I was like, “I’m going to destroy that way of working and make really bad paintings for a few years.” It turned into these landscapes, and I think that transition taught me a lot about how I work and who I am, and what I believe in. It might sound cliche, but I really try to be true to myself and that’s what comes through, and connects people to the color and the mood. I hope my paintings feel fresh and honest. It just comes straight from me to the canvas.
How would you describe the paintings in your studio now for the upcoming New York show?
It’s a little hard for me to approach talking about this show—all of the work has been since last November—because it comes from vulnerable ideas and it’s not something that I want people to even know that I’m thinking about. There’s a big range of work for the “Weather Report.” I was avoiding the press release, because I knew they would ask me for a title and I was thinking, I just don’t want to think about this. It’s so heavy. I wake up every day and look at the weather, and it changes all the time. And that’s how I feel every day in my body. I don’t know what I’m going to face today. It might be really sad, or I might be totally strong. I might feel really stable and happy—who knows? I wake up in the middle of the night to check the time, and the Breaking News pops up, and I tell myself, Don’t look. Don’t look. Go to sleep. So, the “Weather Report,” it is.
in your life?
