Greenfield artist Paul Hoffman’s paintings catch the eye right away. His colors are straightforward and his forms simple. The work is approachable, graphically pleasing. But the more you look at them, the more they surprise you.
“Aqueduct,” a two-panel acrylic painting on board, seems like an illustration from a children’s book in which something unexpected, maybe even fantastical, is about to happen. Why is there a sailboat up on the aqueduct? Where is that steamship going?
Hoffman says that much of the imagery in “Aqueduct” was drawn from his memories of growing up in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The white-washed Carioca Aqueduct, also called Arcos da Lapa, has two tiers and trolley tracks running on top, but Hoffman borrowed its basic form and, in one of the departures from reality that make his work intriguing, set a sailboat atop it.
“The steamship is something like the ship our family took back and forth when we went on home leave to the States,” Hoffman says. “So that’s the memory part. After that, the painting really became a series of problems to resolve. I went about creating a very compressed space and trying to define it through the scale of objects.”
At 66, Hoffman has taken up painting after retiring from a career in illustration. While he’s maintained the discipline he learned as an illustrator, painting represents an entirely new direction for him. Most of the work that’s been on display in a solo show at Greenfield Gallery & Fine Art Printing for the month of June was done since early 2015, when Hoffman began to work in acrylic paints. (Even after the show closes, some of Hoffman’s work can always be seen at the gallery.)
Hoffman took his first full-time drawing job in his early thirties, working as an artist for the University of Chicago, drawing hieroglyphics and temple wall scenes for an expedition in Egypt.
“There was something about the discipline,” Hoffman says. “You had to get up at the crack of dawn every day, have breakfast, and go into a studio where you would draw all day. …I really fell in love with that idea of a drawing life, where you get up in the morning and that’s what you do. And I never lost the imagination for it.”
When he returned to the States, Hoffman continued what would become a 30-year career as an illustrator, working for, among other clients, textbook publishers and the New York Times Living section.
Many of his illustrations are graphically simple, resembling woodblock prints or paper cutouts. Some have the interlocking quality of M.C. Escher drawings. A few remind Hoffman of the style of 1940s travel posters. All were done using scratchboard, a medium that Hoffman says helped him to stay on deadline.
Scratchboard is a paper or cardboard backing that has been coated with white China clay and then black India ink. The artist uses sharp implements to scratch through the black layer to reveal the white beneath.
“With scratchboard, you could always ink over it and start over (if you made a mistake),” Hoffman says. “So that’s kind of how it started. But what actually occurred was that I fell in love with the black and white language of scratchboard.”
“It’s a medium that limits you and channels your expressions in certain ways,” he continues. “Images just pop on scratchboard because of the language of it. And so I never gave it up. My entire 30 years of illustrating was scratchboard; I never picked up a brush.”
Hoffman says this language has carried over into the formal aspects of his paintings.
“I just love form,” he adds. “I liked it as an illustrator, I love it as a painter. I’m always working with the form of things rather than the paint itself.”
Many of Hoffman’s shapes are very simple and repeat within the painting. Trees and fish are often represented with iconic shapes. All of the birds in “Double Bird Panels” are similar to each other, and also to the birds on the windowsill in “Aqueduct.”
And while the size of things might decrease as the image recedes, there aren’t changes in color value that would normally indicate distance, Hoffman points out. Even in paintings that are narrative rather than abstract or patterned, there’s “nothing atmospheric about these except the clouds. Everything else is just really definite.”
This creates, at first glance, a flat feeling to much of Hoffman’s work. Yet, look again. Out of the apparent flatness, mystery arises.
“Aqueduct” is energized by its sense of impending narrative and by the unlikely feel and placement of some of its objects. “Double Bird Panels” gets its energy from the curving lines that break up the painting’s grid-like structure.
“There’s a rhythm to it,” Hoffman says of “Double Bird Panels.”
“The line work creates all the motion. The birds are just kind of there.”
He studies the painting for a moment. “That’s a new language I haven’t quite figured out yet.”
But, there’s no doubt that Hoffman, who rises at 5:30 every morning and paints every day, will keep going until he does.
“I’m 66 and that’s when it happened,” Hoffman says of painting. “But it couldn’t have happened before, that’s how I look at it”
Smiling, he adds, “I feel like I’ve just started.”
Hoffman is represented by The Greenfield Gallery & Fine Art Printing, 231 Main St., Greenfield. Contact: 413-772-9334 or search for the gallery on Facebook.
Visit http://paulhoffmanillustration.com to browse portfolios of Hoffman’s work.