While nude figures still figure prominently, much of his latest work, which will be on display in an upcoming solo show at George Billis Gallery in Connecticut, embodies the simple pleasures of process and beauty.
As a young artist, Hempel was working through the rejection of his own homosexuality by his conservative family, and art was an outlet to process his own experience and in a sense, a form of activism.
“That was my whole big project in the beginning,” he says. “I wanted to see if I could re-present the male figure as it may have looked if homosexuality wasn’t vilified. The older I get the less interested I am in the political world altogether. Also, in my case, from the time I started painting to now, the whole culture has undergone a vast change. What felt like a real energetic push toward something that needed to be said or done…I no longer feel that urgency at all.”
His recent work features the male figure in seascape settings that reflect his upbringing in Los Angeles and considerable time spent in Hawaii.
Hempel is finding the shift away from conceptually complex works liberating.
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Guardians of the Temple – Simon Dinnerstein reflects on The Fulbright Triptych 50 years later.
The Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State University exhibits Simon Dinnerstein's The Fulbright Triptych haunts the visual lexicon of 20th century American representational art. Fifty years have passed since Dinnerstein completed the painting in 1974.
A City Perspective
Leslie Gaduzo has always been interIested in art. Since childhood, he has been drawing constantly, from single point perspective drawings at age 10 to complex architectural drawings.
Living Legacy
The Butler Institue hosts Allied Artists of America's 110th Annual Juried Exhibition.
Elegant yet Approachable
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JAMES AYERS: The Importance of Play
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GINA MINICHINO: Playing with Food
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Island Light
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Solitary Forms
Hogan Brown has been working with Arcadia Contemporary for two and half years and is excited to be featured in his first solo show at the gallery. He doesn't take for granted the many talented figurative painters Arcadia represents and is thrilled to be among them.
Living the Dream
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