. nif hodgson . curtis.gessner

The first artist I stumbled upon (no pun intended, I don’t Stumble, for those of you who know what I mean), was Nif Hodgson. I was taken in by the organic, flowing nature of his prints. I like the prints that he did because they were somewhat reminiscent of Matisse to me. Furthermore, the texturing, or apparent texturing that I could see on my computer screen was something that I was taken aback by, as the texturing of the prints I’ve done have very little texture.

The artist himself is currently accruing the necessary pieces to graduate from San Francisco University, in 2012. This will be for his master’s degree, which will be in fine arts. He originally graduated in 1997 from the University of Texas, Austin. Both of his parents were artists and printmakers, and he sort of fell into the same trap, so to speak, has been pursuing art in some form for his entire life. He is currently the artist in residence at Berkeley.

There were two pieces that I really liked. One is the ubiquitous tree motif, done with multiple plates, and is an etching. I particularly like the slate grey which is not uniform that serves as the background color of the piece, as well as the near photo realism of the branches and the tree itself. The color of the tree is also interesting, as the use of lines create an illusion of shadow. These were the most visually pleasing to me.

The other prints that I liked were the prints which depicted the human form. As I stated before they were somewhat reminiscent of Matisse to me. Each of these prints seems somewhat depressing in nature, they each use subdued colors, and the people themselves are depicted in grayscale. The focus of shading in each of the people is interesting too, certain parts of their bodies are accented by a darker grey color than other parts, forcing the eye to focus on these darker areas after taking in the print as a whole.