On Saturday April 25, 2015 spend an afternoon with artist Brian Hoover at Coos Art Museum. The event will begin at 1pm with a walk-through critique of the Expressions West 2015 exhibition for which Hoover served as the juror. At about 2pm the event will continue with an artist guided tour of Hoover’s own exhibition A Feast of Dreams and conclude with a PowerPoint presentation detailing his artistic process. The PowerPoint presentation will last about 45 minutes. The event is free and the public is invited to attend. Brian Hoover’s highly detailed and symbolic work revolves around dreams, myth and spirituality. Regarding his artistic process Hoover states the following “I approach my work in two distinctive ways. In the ‘splash’ pieces, I begin a painting by spilling and splashing liquefied paint onto the surface of a canvas; not unlike an abstract expressionist would. After the paint dries I begin to ‘Rorschach’ images that my subconscious sees in the abstract puddles of paint. I then try to render in a more traditional manner – without completely disturbing the freshness of the spill –a representational narrative that often equals the strangeness and absurdity of dreams….The other approach is almost the polar opposite of the first,…This is much more of an ‘academic’ approach to painting. I first conceptualize an idea in a pencil sketch, then a drawing with a full range of values and then the final painting. The Harbinger Series best represents this approach. Landscape, academic flesh, and an allegorical animal are present in each of these paintings. I created Harbinger I as a self-portrait of my dreaming subconscious.” Hoover an Associate Professor of painting and printmaking at Southern Utah University received art training at the Cleveland Institute of Art, Kutztown University and the State University of New York where he received his Master of Fine Arts degree. He has participated in several Coos Art Museum exhibitions including Expressions West and in our Annual Maritime Art Exhibition. In 2009, he received a first place award in Expressions West for his painting “Girl with Fantastic Hat IX (Saturnalia).”
