Post 2000: New Works

Ernie Hudson

13 April - 22 April 2018

In association with Flatpack Festival's 1968 programme, A3 presents recent paintings by Ernie Hudson.

Opening hours: 14, 15, 20, 21, 22 April
12pm - 5pm

A lynchpin of the Birmingham Arts Lab print workshop in the 1970s Ernie Hudson has continued to plough his own creative furrow since then.

For Ernie working an image can sometimes be like a game of consequences where a group of random colours lead to a 'finished' piece. Made in his Moseley studio, the paintings have taken hours, weeks or even years to complete producing multiple layers from which figurative elements emerge from the surface rather than being determined at the outset.

For me the empty canvas is an invitation. A chance for mark against mark and for colour against colour. The blank rectangle isn't intimidating, it never becomes the Artists Void. It's a siren call to have fun, to improvise and explore the accident, to enhance the calligraphic or just luxuriate in the sensations that paint evokes. This mark making has no connection to abstract expressionism, I have no issues around "simplified compositional motifs" or "not concealing the process". Working an image can sometimes be like a game of consequences where a group of random colours lead to a finished item.

When I get asked "what kind of painting?" I always reply "whatever I like". I hardly ever have any preconceived idea of what a piece will look like or when it will be finished. The paintings in this exhibition have taken hours, weeks or even years to complete. Most have multiple layers and figurative elements emerge from the surface rather than being imposed upon it.

Art today has as many meanings as there are practitioners. Everything and anything can be and is Art.

Abstract Art particularly when applied to oil on canvas is a misnomer. Every painting is about illusion and in that sense all painting is "abstract". That figure/landscape/interior isn't real. The thing that has been portrayed isn't really there, you can't do anything with it and it has no function until the viewer surrenders to the piece, suspends disbelief and enters into the painting.

Observational drawing is the core of my practice as an artist and drawing with paint has been the object of desire in and out of the studio as long as I can remember.
ERNIE HUDSON, 2018

To accompany the exhibition as part of Flatpack Festival's '1968' programme of events, Ernie and fellow artist behind the Arts Lab’s amazing 70s output of screen-printed posters, Bob Linney, will talk about their work then and now. ERNIE HUDSON & BOB LINNEY IN CONVERSATION, Friday 13th April, 2018, The Mockingbird, 17:00 - 18:30