Reggie Burrows Hodges

A tennis ball, warped by the speed of impact, is captured right before it lands on the painted boundary of the court, its oblong shape conveyed through negative space—a window into the black ground with which Maine-based American artist Reggie Burrows Hodges (born 1965) treats his canvases. This is movement as observed by a hawkeye, a painterly strategy particular to his paintings.
Hodges' atmospheric memory paintings feature scenes sourced from his childhood in 1970s Compton, California. In this fully illustrated volume, Hodges constructs a grammar of tiled floors, wallpaper, tennis courts, patterned robes and sports uniforms. With a delicate touch, he captures glimpses of the past and renders them hazy and indistinct, laden with the tension of personal memory. Guided by this painterly approach, Hodges creates gentle and profound emotional collisions that ripple throughout his work.

Maine-based painter Reggie Burrows Hodges (born 1965) explores storytelling and visual metaphor, often drawing inspiration from his childhood in Compton, California. Starting from a black ground, Hodges develops the scene around his figures, who materialize in the recessive space with foggy, ethereal brushwork.
Hodges' figures are "forms that are made sharper, and more haunting, not because we see those things in their eyes, but because we see it in their bodies, their postures, the endless desire for humans not to be alone, and to connect," Hilton Als writes. "To that Hodges adds all that wonderful blackness."
This fully illustrated catalog features a selection of works made between 2019 and 2020; a newly commissioned essay by Hilton Als; and an interview between the artist and Suzette McAvoy, Executive Director at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art.