“Life is so colourful, rich and dynamic. I want my paintings to carry that essence. That is what I'm seeking. The joyful, playful, the creative and the wild.”
Beginning her education at the University of Brighton on the BA painting program, Hutley b.1991 went on to finish the three year fine art painting program at the esteemed Florence Academy of Art, where she continued her look into classical realism learning techniques practiced by the old masters. A pivotal point in her career led her to change her means of expression, having previously been contained within realism’s rigid framework.
Hutley has long since been interested in the balance between the feminine and the masculine. Masculinity, to her, represents the controlled, measured, and the ordered: a container or boundary for things to exist. Whereas, the feminine is represented by chaos, and wildness and the unrestrained.
In her most recent works, she beautifully walks the tightrope of these polarities: one which she views as an inner experience and the other a more external rendering of nature. Through her exploration of paint, pigment and material she is able to open the gates for these tempestuous, yet beautiful, worlds to meet.
She is captivated and inspired by materiality and texture. Her series on wood brought her back to her first principles, her essence of being. A phase that she describes as experimental, joyful and fun. Through these paintings she was able to return to the playful freedom and potential of the unknown. Her beliefs lie in life’s richness, its vivid nature and its dynamism - with her paintings becoming an extension of this.
She has explored novel and unique ways to build up and carve back layers of paint using found material, used turps, furniture paint and pigment. Such textures and colours can hardly be replicated by the human hand but are rather a result of the manipulation of materials - ones which have their own lives and behaviours - in a way that creates room for serendipity and magic: room for the beauty of the unknown. It takes several months until the ‘perfect’ balance and alchemy is achieved.
She questions the very notion of aesthetic beauty through her use of discarded turps, wood and paint and emphasises, through her work, that the true magic and beauty lies not within representation but rather within chance, accident and discovery - finding beauty in entropy.
Exhibitions
2023 Society of Woman Artists, Mall Galleries
2022 The Places we Go, Soho Revue, London
2021 The Passive Night of the Senses, London
Residencies
2019/20 PADA, Lisbon
IONA HUTLEY