W ith its highly saturated colours and bold, abstract shapes, Getting Through This from 2017 illuminates the vivid engagement with colour and light, the organic and the surreal, the individual and the universal, which has garnered Shara Hughes international and critical acclaim in recent years. Using memory, association and imagination to subvert traditional representations of landscape, Hughes’ vistas explore the psychological and spiritual realms through the artist’s fantastical use of colour. Luscious forms and illusory shapes are mapped by the artist’s expressive brushstrokes, evoking a whimsical otherworldliness akin to Matisse’s Fauvist landscapes and David Hockney’s electric compositions. As opposed to using the usual horizontal orientation, Hughes mimics the proportions of a vertical phone screen, straying from conventional spatial relationships involving strict delineations of foreground, middle ground, and background. In utilising a myriad of framing strategies, Getting Through This invites the viewer into a surrealistic, prismatic impression of reality. With organic shapes employed as visual entry points, elements of Hughes’ landscapes hint at the figurative, with the artist noting “I have often thought of the flowers and trees as figures. Sometimes, even a wave or a sun in the painting takes on a personality, so it varies depending on how the work turns out” (Shara Hughes quoted in: “Shara Hughes – Interview: ‘I wanted the works to feel like figures you would visit at a church, something divine,’” in Studio International, 17 May 2021, online).
 

Boldly abstracted shapes taken from nature act as an invitation at the compositional foreground of the present work, rolling gently upwards towards a hill of swaying greenery before reaching a mottled sky of rippling blue clouds. Reminiscent of colour field painting, these highly evocative, mystical forms appear to respond to the slightest changes of light and weather. Similar to Matisse or Derain, Hughes delineates forms by engaging with vibrant fields of color and transitions in tone, carefully building the structure of her compositions through the application of color with bold, isolated brushstrokes. The illusory landscape of Getting Through This recalls the evocative, semiabstract forms of Derain’s kaleidoscopic dreamscapes of mesmerising colour in which the familiar shapes of nature are utterly transformed. Acting as a portal to physiological discovery, Getting Through This exists at the intoxicating interchange between aesthetic and sensory perception, where fantasy and reality coalesce. Shara Hughes was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1981. She earned a B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2004 before studying at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Hughes has achieved numerous awards and residencies, including a room of her work at the 2017 Whitney Biennial at The Whitney Museum of Art. Her work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Georgia as well as the Denver Art Museum, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

《度過難關》（2017年作）透過高度飽和的色彩以及大膽抽象的形體，以生動活潑的方式連結顏色和光線、有機和超自然、個體和宇宙，這些均是休斯近年在國際間廣獲好評的原因。這幅遠景作品利用記憶、聯想和想像力顛覆風景畫的傳統表述，以夢幻色彩探索未知的心理和精神領域。 富表現張力的筆觸，勾勒出一個個豐盛而虛幻的形體，營造出近似馬蒂斯野獸派景觀和大衛・霍克尼式構圖的奇趣異世界。有別於普遍的橫向構圖，藝術家採取模仿手機屏幕的直向比例，擺脫了傳統空間關係對前景、中景和背景的嚴格劃分。畫作運用多元化的構圖策略和技巧，邀請觀者進入一個超現實、如棱鏡幻彩般的現實。一連串的有機形狀成為視覺切入點，部分風景元素更帶有具象的特質，一如藝術家本人所述：「我一向視花卉和樹木為人體。有時候，連畫中的波浪和太陽也會擁有性格和生命，這些都視乎作品最後的成果而變化」（引述莎拉・休斯，〈莎拉・休斯訪問：「我希望作品帶有教堂人物的神聖味道」〉，《Studio International》，2021年5月17日，網上資源）。

前景從大自然幻化而來的大膽抽象形體，成為整個構圖的焦點，緩慢而溫和地吸引觀眾視線上移至山間搖曳的翠綠，以及由蕩漾藍雲形成的斑駁天空。這些神秘誘人的形體，彷彿會因應最微小的光線和氣候變化而改變，令人聯想起色域繪畫的特徵。《度過難關》彷如一扇窺探生物機能的窗扉，存在於審美和官能感知的交滙點，構築了一個想像和現實合一的世界。莎拉・休斯在1981年生於美國喬治亞州亞特蘭大，在2004年取得羅德島設計學院藝術學士學位，及後到斯科希甘繪畫與雕塑學院進修。休斯曾參與多個藝術家駐留計劃，並屢獲殊榮，當中包括2017年惠特尼雙年展期間，館方在一個展廳展出她的作品。她的作品獲惠特尼美國藝術博物館、大都會藝術博物館、 喬治亞當代藝術博物館、丹佛藝術博物館以及史密森尼美國藝術博物館等機構收藏。