Pete Hocking - Leaving Broken Hearts Behind
Four Eleven Gallery Through September 9. 2021
Reception Friday, August 27, 7-9pm
ALL AT ONCE, THE PAIN RESTORES YOU, Oil on panel, 24 x 24”
Continuing Hocking’s exploration of emotion and visual perception in the Cape Cod landscape, Leaving Broken Hearts Behind is about transcending inconsequential grievance and embracing awe. Of his motivation, Hocking says, “Too many of my days are spent mucking around in conflicts that simply won’t matter in a month or a year. And while I burn energy in spiraling thoughts, a glorious world spins past. I don’t want to be blinded by things over which I have no control. I want to live in radical amazement of what’s before me. I want my paintings to be instigated by joy.”
These paintings exemplify Hocking’s rich use of paint. Whether through delicate marks or bold fields of color, there’s a physicality to the work and a sense of presence. While it’s easy to categorize Hocking as a landscape painter, it’s probably more accurate to say he’s a painter of feeling or fleeting experience.
Pete Hocking is an interdisciplinary artist, activist, and teacher who works between Providence, Rhode Island & Provincetown, Massachusetts. His work is concerned with personal narrative, poetics, and political consciousness. His studio practice focuses on both spatial poetics and the construction of identity within the context of contemporary social and political life. In addition he is interested in the ways that individual human identity is inscribed into human and non-human landscapes, and ultimately in the ways that the non-human world defies human intervention.