The color engages you first. From the moment you ascend to the second-floor Hexum Gallery in Montpelier, a party-hued exhibition pulls you in. Titled “The Spontaneous Garden,” Eric Hibit‘s collection of paintings sparks joy. Even more so when you notice the bumps: hundreds of tiny dots of acrylic paint that give his surfaces, and his subjects, unusual dimensionality. (Note: Photographs don’t do this work justice.)
Hibit freckles his subjects — primarily drawn from the natural world — with paint in the same or a contrasting color. In some places he adds slightly larger dots that look like wee canapés: round wafers stacked with one or two smaller rounds in different colors. Hexum Gallery owner John Zaso explained that Hibit dries little blobs of acrylic on baking sheets, then glues them to his canvases. It’s a carefully controlled process that paradoxically gives his paintings a vibratory energy.
Hibit’s works are essentially figurative but only loosely based on the actual world; his is a more magical realism. And he’s clearly enamored of nature’s smallest creatures. In the charming 30-by-24-inch “Beautiful Mushrooms,” for example, a blue snail hovers below the trio of fungi. A bright red bird zooms through the leaves in “Sprouting Branch” (Zaso said the 30-by-60-inch piece was painted specifically for this exhibit). Three 10-by-8-inch works that Zaso calls the “nursery paintings” feature a pink bird, yellow snail, and orange-and-black bumblebee — and they would indeed be at home in a children’s book or bedroom.
One still life included in the show is Hibit’s most traditional in theme, if not in coloration. “Jam and Dough” (20 by 16 inches) sets on a tabletop a round of dough, a rolling pin, a jar of raspberry jam and a bowl holding a single yellow apple. The table is diagonally striped in blue and green; the wall at the back is orange with yellow dots. Hibit takes care to mimic the wood grain of the rolling pin but dispenses with perspective. The flattened plane and electrified colors give this otherwise ordinary domestic scene a jolting, graphic urgency.
It’s no surprise to learn that the New York City-based artist and art educator is also the author of the book Color Theory for Dummies. But he doesn’t eschew gentler tones, as evidenced in the 36-by-30-inch composition “Azalea Bush in Bushwick.” Though dominated by pink and azure blues, the piece includes a signature subtle detail: a rainbow prism hanging in a window near the titular tree.
The Montpelier exhibition includes three paintings with no color — that is, just black. They are simple ink drawings of flowers on rag paper. Unlike the exacting execution of Hibit’s acrylic paintings, these are fluid and gestural.
In an exhibition catalog for “The Spontaneous Garden,” artist Chris Bogia captures the spirit of his friend’s work: “[F]amiliar subjects such as ‘shrooms, gems, food, flowers, fruits, and insects continue to perform mischievously in Hibit’s work, revealing mysteries that belie their initial childlike innocence.”
A reception and catalog-launch party for “The Spontaneous Garden” is on Friday, July 7, 4 to 8 p.m. Currently the exhibit is scheduled to close on July 14 but may be extended. Learn more on Instagram @hexumgallery or at hexumgallery.com.
This article appears in The Cartoon Issue 2023.
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