While on residency in Skagen, Denmark in the summer of 2022, Shara Hughes made a suite of works on paper based on her experience of the local landscape. Exhibited at Right This Way at the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art, Aalborg, during the summer of 2023 (see video below for an introduction to the show), the works reflect her time at the northernmost tip of Denmark, an area graced by turbulent tides, wide horizons and beautiful light. Five of these works are featured here.
In a process that reflects the methods of many artists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Hughes would spend time outside, absorbing the forms and atmosphere of the landscape, before returning to her room to convert her experiences into drawings and paintings. With their mix of observation, allusions to art history and personal emotion, Hughes creates what she calls ‘invented landscapes’.
‘I got very inspired’, comments Hughes, ‘and would walk around during the days and come back to my room and start drawing and painting. A lot of them repeat the horizons, there is almost always water, different shapes of trees, and lots of sand dunes. I love to watch how the tides and colours of the clouds change and I remember staying at Louisiana (Museum of Modern Art) too, where the pathways down to the ocean were being lit by the bright moon at night.’
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