In the Studio with Simon Hughes

INTERVIEW

Published Dec 14, 2020

Simon Hughes, The Day, WIP

You’ve just completed a large public art installation called The Day at a transit station in Toronto! As next year is the year of public art in the city, do you have any advice for other artists working at this scale?

To say that his project was a learning experience would be a profound understatement. I am now armed with a lot of potential advice for other artists relating to various facets of public art. From a purely creative standpoint, though, I think what I would say is that you should not be intimidated by the scale (though I don’t think artists often are) or scope of the project. Ultimately you can still function as you would in your usual studio practice, and retain that freedom even when there is a large logistical and bureaucratic apparatus around you. My original proposal, and even what was approved by the project’s backers, changed radically throughout the process. At first I was contorting myself to stay within the parameters of what I had originally designed for the various areas of the site, but once I gave myself permission to change things—just like I would working on a painting in the studio—the overall work really kicked into high gear. To be clear, though: all of that radical re-imagining should be confined to the design process; not the sort of thing to do with 50 people in orange vests and hardhats waiting around.

Your project, The Day, spans the length of many walls, with each section being unique and having its own approach. Do you have a favourite part of the installation?

From a technical standpoint, the large “sunburst” area was the most satisfying to see realized, as I almost broke my brain trying to figure how to lay it out. Having said that, there are a few Easter eggs in the big “cityscape” section that make me happy, like the donut shop, taco stand, pterodactyl skeleton and the Pac-Man ghost towering over a Walmart. If that last sentence didn’t make people curious to see the project, I don’t know what would…

You use watercolours to blend painting and collage, usually working on a specific colour with each piece. What influences the colour that you’re using?

Once I have a blank canvas in front of me, I start going through my drawers of collage material looking for things to use as a starting point for the painting. Usually I find an image, or maybe a few, that have a colour palette that inspires me, and I go from there. Since all of the colours in the painting are achieved with many translucent glazes of paint, I am always aiming to achieve the palette of that first image, so that by the time I insert it onto the painting (after several layers of paint have been built up), it blends in. The goal is to have as little difference between the painted and collaged elements as possible. A painting I just finished called Mountain (bubbles) entirely grew out of one image of a 1960s Happening with naked artists in big plastic bubbles, but with an amazing peachy-coral colour to it. Sometimes the initial image never even makes it into the painting. I had this Richard Avedon studio portrait of Marilyn Monroe riding a bicycle that had the most beautiful palette of lavender and various blues. It inspired many different paintings, but ultimately there just wasn’t any reason to include Marilyn riding a bike in any of them.

In your studio series, you make reference to Lawren Harris’ practice when he was in New Mexico. What drew you to that time period in his life?

Letting kids collaborate in my work was fun and introduced an element of chance that was really interesting to Lawren Harris is the ultimate Canadian picture-on-a-tote-bag famous painter, so there isn’t too much left to say about his most well-known works with the mountains, snow, icebergs, etc. People like to use his imagery as a point of national pride, about drawing strength and creating beauty out of the rugged environment and all that. I’ve always been interested in his later work, where he was venturing into abstraction. It’s interesting to think of a painter starting out by painting images of urban poverty in Toronto, then moving on to winter landscapes, and finally achieving a complete liberation from reality. When I went to the American southwest to go to graduate school, I, too, became interested in the desert and could empathize with how alien it must have felt for Harris to move from the north to that kind of environment. The later work shows that he was not really seeking to define the nation (Canada) through his painting as we are often told, but in the bigger picture was on a more personal spiritual journey, one that connects him with an international group of like-minded artists such as O’Keefe, Burchfield, Pelton, Dove and the like.

In the past you’ve encouraged your children to make marks on your paintings and have created room for them in your practice. How does being a parent influence your practice?

Letting kids collaborate in my work was fun and introduced an element of chance that was really interesting to work around and that got me out of my own head. I think the main thing about having kids and being an artist is you don’t want to be disappointing. The artist Matthew Brannon has a section in one of his text works about the profound embarrassment you can feel about being an artist, waiting in line at the art-supply store, etc. That feeling is amplified when you have kids. I need them to feel that what I do is real, it’s not just a hobby, or something less than what the other dads from the hockey team do for a living or whatever. That fear of being unsubstantial in their eyes keeps you going. 

Is there anything that you are particularly looking forward to in the new year?

I had dreams of doing a spring break road trip (maybe even in an RV (?!?) to south Texas for spring migration birdwatching (my daughter is a big birder), but that seems a bit ambitious at this point. Maybe more realistic is that I hope to get to Toronto to finally see my public artwork fully installed, and reconnect with some friends and family there. Dare to dream!

SEE MORE FROM THE IN THE STUDIO SERIES