Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

Hilda Hiary’s Colorful, Contemplative Paintings

Painter Hilda Hiary uses bright colors and fleeting patterns to create images that unite instead of divide. Born in Ammam and self-identified as an Arab-Jordanian artist, Hiary forgoes ethnic markers in her characters in favor of soft swirls and fading lines. Just as her lines are never straight, Hiary's characters are never still. Whether talking or smoking, they are always invigorated with a sense of movement. The dynamic energy is only bolstered by the oscillating patterns.

Painter Hilda Hiary uses bright colors and fleeting patterns to create images that unite instead of divide. Born in Ammam and self-identified as an Arab-Jordanian artist, Hiary forgoes ethnic markers in her characters in favor of soft swirls and fading lines. Just as her lines are never straight, Hiary’s characters are never still. Whether talking or smoking, they are always invigorated with a sense of movement. The dynamic energy is only bolstered by the oscillating patterns.

Hiary’s characters are social creatures. The works explore the complex relations between two girlfriends, mothers and their unborn children, and men and women. In each of her paintings, Hiary uses the form of a circle as an exploratory tool to dissect the human psyche. Emotions, just as political turmoil, are circular, rising and abating through time. Though the conflicting and fearful feelings a mother has toward her pregnancy are vastly different in subject from the heaviness and uncertainty left in the wake of the Arab Spring, Hiary’s use of the circle motif unites the two themes, drawing attention to the potential for both destruction and creation.

Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
Brooklyn based artist Jonathan Viner pursues dreamlike visions that blend the design aesthetic of the time he grew up in, the 1970s, with cool tones and pops of bright colors. First featured in Hi-Fructose Vol. 34, and on our blog, one of the strengths of Viner's oil paintings lies in their stylish look, using elements of the era's sex appeal, trendy accents, kitsch and fashion, to pump up their nostalgia and intrigue. In his upcoming exhibition "Strange Math" at Roq La Rue Gallery in Seattle, Viner offers a cinematic narrative in a series of new allegorical paintings.
Kevin Peterson's subjects exist somewhere between a wintery city and sunny Houston, where the artist is currently based. Do a web search on his art, and the response is polarizing. Hyperrealism has become a controversial art form- most admire the excruciating detail, while others disagree with copying tags or photographs. Without question, Petersons' portraits of children in a graffiti-colored world are emotional and ironic. His current show at Thinkspace gallery, "Remnants", portrays his own fantasy-urban jungle.
German painter Alpay Efe portrays a contemporary beauty in his works, but he isn't interested in perfection. His paintings of still life, nudes, and modern figures focus instead on the ever so slight smile or the way light touches a form as he sees it. Influenced by Zeitgeist art and pop culture, he paints figuratively and realistically, using primarily oil paint on wood panel. The background in many of Efe's paintings shows his art studio in Oberhausen, Germany. His studio is what you might expect- towels on the easel, cups of coffee and half-eaten doughnuts, and there is a certain attitude and specificity to the way he captures it.
Israeli artist Nir Hod once told Interview Magazine, his greatest discovery was that "it's not easy getting older." In his painting series "Genius," Hod pulls at the tension between childhood and adulthood and breaks open a space in between innocence and inurement. His images are of young children smoking cigarettes and looking at the viewer with expressions of disdain, arrogance and suspicion. Though there is certainly an element of dark humor in dressing rosy-cheeked toddlers in rich fabrics and endowing them with sweeping hair, the paintings are disquieting for their ability to reflect one's now-corrupted inner child back unto him.

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List