Blackies Religion
2022
Acrylic and pastel on linen
A current Maine resident, Reggie Burrows Hodges is a painter whose work explores storytelling and visual metaphor. He was influenced by his childhood in Compton, and his canvases often explores themes of community, identity, truth, and memory. He attended the University of Kansas on a tennis scholarship and studied theater and film. He later lived in Vermont and New York, and during this time he co-founded a dub-rock group for which he wrote music and performed. Hodges later described music as “a major driving force …. It’s a medicine …. A solution for acclimating myself and situating myself within a space.” Throughout his life, Hodges worked in many capacities in television and film production, and co-owned Bass Mind Recording Studio in Brooklyn, New York. He also professionally coached tennis on USTA/ITF Pro Circuit. These varied interests shine through in the kinetic feeling of his canvases which often capture the sense of a blurry moment in time through his hazy, yet lyrical, figurations.
Hodges begins every canvas with an all-black background and only then begins adding color into the composition. Through this darkness, figures begin to emerge but are never quite identified. The faces and scenes of these meditative reflections always feel like they are just out of reach, as if they are being viewed from a distance (perhaps the lens of time). He often plays with perception in his work, using a foggy sort of brushwork that blends subject and setting giving the two the same visual hierarchy, provoking questions about the intrinsic relationship of the subjects and their environment. “Their quiet haziness, developed with the soft touch of Hodges' hand, probes the imprecision of memory and examines the possibility that we are all products of our environment.” Hodges currently teaches at Maine College of Art and Design.