Artist statement
Ira hoffecker
Artist Statement
A few years ago, during isolation, I started to paint organic shapes which I encountered during my walks and added those to my compositions with geometric structures. Some of these paintings extended beyond individual plant studies and became abstracted landscapes. Working with oil paints and painting organic material introduced themes and processes into my work, which are constantly evolving and unfolding.
I have started to name some of my paintings after books that I am reading and music pieces that I listen to while I create. During the last years I also had the privilege of being exposed to live jazz music and opera performances during our residency times in New York. I incorporate the passionate foundations of jazz rhythmic extemporization and operatic complexities through the fervent rendering of lively abstract and organic shapes. I start the underpainting with an abstract composition and use color and organic shapes to translate the many different impulses I experience in the big city. During my years of studying art, I have done a lot of research in regards to color theory and I take pleasure in applying what I have learned from the color masters and theorists like Itten, Albers, Goethe and others.
The different identities cities take on over time inform my abstract urban paintings which you can find in the Structures/Architecture Gallery. I am interested in the ways that urban geography is reshaped by history. My work portrays cycles of revision and restoration in the man-made landscape by replicating the geometric shapes of maps, architectural drawings and photographs.