Billy Hoff’s painted flights of fancy abound in his exhibition through Oct. 6 at the Feldman Family Artspace, curated by Featherstone Center for the Arts at the M.V. Film Center.
Hoff was born in Princeton, New Jersey and received his BFA from Ithaca College and MFA from the School of The Art Institute of Chicago. He has lived and worked on Martha’s Vineyard for some 25 years where he is recognized for his copper and brass lanterns.
Hoff creates wild imaginary worlds for us to make of them what we wish. Two pieces, at 7 x 5 feet, fill the wall from top to bottom in the bright gallery space.
Four tall, top-hatted men dressed in garments, reminiscent of the 1800s, stand onboard a ship deck in “Snail.” In its center are two smaller figures, whom Hoff considers children, but are dressed in the same era clothing, and look just like miniature versions of the adults. One holds a long leash attached to a giant, animated snail that seems to be racing the tortoise by its side. The scene has an Alice in Wonderland-type logic to it.
The red-coated man, back to us, looks over the side of the boat onto the stark blue water with cliffs in the background, Hoff identifies as the Aquinnah cliffs.
He works in oils and acrylics with brushes and palette knife, creating a variegated surface that pulls our gaze in to try and discern the images covered up and those that break through from underneath. Hoff writes in his artist statement, “I paint from my imagination. It’s not practical. Things have to be revealed or discovered to feel ‘right.’
Conscious invention runs the risk of feeling contrived or forced. Things go best when I get out of my own way. ”
In the lower left of “Action,” the second of the enormous works, sitting with back toward us, is a movie director, hand on head, perhaps having just told the falling figure above to jump from the hull of the large ship that juts across much of the picture frame. To the right, a woman is swinging in the air with a bucket, painting the ship’s side. At its center is another top-hatted figure, head bent, in the back of a small boat moving away from us toward an indistinct and distant land. Hoff populates the scene with additional anonymous individuals waiting for an unseen ship or mulling about onshore. His bold colors and vigorous brushwork produce a visual soundscape for the hubbub, even without knowing precisely what’s going on.
“I like to think of my paintings as stories,” writes Hoff. “There is implied narrative. There are people, places, and things. If pressed, I can explain and elaborate. It all makes perfect sense to me. Often, the themes are grand: Love and loss, birth and death. And often, they are not. But the imagery has been filtered through my own experiences and shaped by my exposure to literature, film, and art.”
Although the wall labels say 2024 for the paintings, Hoff has worked on the pieces for many years, returning to them over time. “Painting for me has to be an exploration. It’s really about the journey and discovery of finding images and revealing the ambiguous shapes that might develop into something.”
We see this in “The Landscape Painter,” which began as a pastoral scene. “Then this figure kind of emerged,” Hoff explains, pointing to a man facing us with an easel just to his right. Below him is a brown goat, front legs illogically splayed out, extending almost the width of the canvas. The creature drops coins from its right hoof, and the gold cloud-like form above picks up the shimmery surface. “It’s a pennies from heaven sort of thing,” Hoff shares.
Although a fanciful image, Hoff locates the fishing boats in “Dories” at the real Squibnocket Beach. Peeking out from under the arm of the main, blue-jacketed man is an appealing pup looking into our eyes. Here, as elsewhere in Hoff’s work, the tale is one that we make of it.
“I like short story fiction,” he says. “If it is done well, it can capture a brief moment in time. Something distinct: a smell, a light, or a feeling. A good writer can quickly sketch out a relationship that depicts a universal truth. It reminds us that we are all on the same ride and are really not that different from one another.”
“Celebrating the Art of Billy Hoff” is on view at the Feldman Family Artspace through Oct. 6.
