Jude Hotchkiss spent her early years in an isolated rural environment where the weather, seasons, bushland, wide open spaces and skies gave her a feeling for light, shadow, colour and form. She studied as a mature age student at the College of Fine Art in Sydney and gained a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Masters in painting. Her love of using colour and texture to express movement and energy in her work has been evident throughout her painting career. She now works in her inner-city studio creating contemporary abstracts, landscapes, still life, portraits and streetscapes based on what is around her. This might be her immediate environment, or memory of a place, or the people close to her. Her work has a unique energy and holds a sense of place, revealing how comfortable and familiar she is with where she has lived, and her local neighbourhood.

These contemporary semi-abstracted works are Jude’s recent paintings and bring together years of experience with using unusual textural marks and representational forms. Recent drawing classes have given her the confidence to use the traditional structural framework of the streetscape to hold looser linework, a wider range of colour, and more distortion. Recent curatorial advice has encouraged her to take more risks using a spontaneous and lively approach to her work, resulting in works that are exciting and unique.

Jude uses digital sketches to help offer textural and colour combinations that might not be suggested when using more traditional media. She continues to use photographs during the process of resolution, and experiments digitally with different tones and marks to bring the work to resolution.

Being a finalist in many art prizes, including the Muswellbrook, Mosman, NEAP, Calleen, Lethbridge Landscape, Hornsby and others both here in NSW as well as Queensland and Victoria, Jude has reached a high standard in the art community. Her most recent solo and group exhibitions have been with the now closed Sketch Co gallery in Surry Hills.

Artist Statement

The architectural features of my inner-city back lanes make interesting and unique compositions. There is a vibrancy in the ordinariness of everyday scenes, and the added street grunge of graffiti along with heritage buildings, wall murals and weathered walls makes this an exciting environment.

The laneways are alive with beautiful trees, garbage bins, power poles and federation facades. I wanted to show the energy and vibrancy of this diverse neighbourhood, a place that I am very familiar with, and comfortable in. Flat areas of fluorescent colour help add intensity and embody the lively spirit of this place. This also adds a street style edginess that is distinctive to the area.

My background in abstract painting is brought into a more representational style with these works. I use strong gestural sweeps of colour and shape to suggest movement and vitality. There is a build up of texture that suggests strength in the structures. Back lanes do not have many cars, and offer an inverted V shaped perspective. This triangular arrangement, looking towards the horizon, gives the work depth and distance. – Jude Hotchkiss

Heartland Dance

As a child growing up in an isolated regional part of NSW I came to painting to help process personal feelings, to paint what I know and what is familiar, and to celebrate the joy and release that comes from using colour and texture. The recent illness and death of a sibling brought about intense contrasting feelings of grief and release, so it was natural for me that this would be part of my art practice.

Based on the places I call home, my streetscapes and churchyard paintings originate from my local area in Sydney, and the treescapes that came from travelling so often through northwest NSW where my family still lives.

Last year the usually arid north west of NSW, Wayilwan country, had a rare golden season with lush new growth appearing. Trees, for me, have always been a symbol of personhood, and a beautiful abundance of one tree in particular for me became a symbol of solace and comfort. With its long sweeping yellow branches and graceful curves, it was called a Weeping Myall. It became a feature in some of these artworks.

In Sydney my local historic church graveyard gave strong abstracted tree and tombstone structures, where sweeping gestural and textured landscape marks could graph the intensity of loss. Happiness expressed in colour came also in a celebration of the care and closure around serious illness.

I am seeking to bring together a suggestion of representational elements such as trees and headstones with the looseness, movement and energy abstracted marks can embody. This needs to look effortless, but involves painting and repainting many times. Acrylic paint on canvas gives me the freedom to work quickly and spontaneously from plein air sketches taken from a familiar place or home environment. – Jude Hotchkiss