This story was featured in the January 2019 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art January 2019 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
Many plein-air artists aim for lots of expressive brushwork and color. But Charlie Hunter steers away from what he calls the “traditional plein-air lexicon” in favor of soft-focused paintings in which hazy shades of brown and gray give his weathered motifs the wistful semblance of relics. Often, Hunter is portraying the same small-town America he drew as a boy growing up in rural New England. On his canvases, sepia-toned railroads, train depots, and farm machinery receive portrait-like focus. “That’s always kind of felt like my calling,” says Hunter. “To say to people, ‘Hey, look what’s over here. Isn’t that neat?’”
The Bellows Falls, VT, artist earned his degree in graphic design from Yale University in 1981, with no plans to be a painter. He went on to design tour posters for concert acts like R.E.M. and The Clash, and on the side, he started to dabble in painting. In 2002, after a decade-long career in music management, Hunter started painting seriously, both en plein air and in his studio. “I kind of fell into the way I paint now,” he says. “I’m really intrigued with telling a story as truthfully as possible that’s all sinew and bone, with no fat.”
If the artist’s frank, bare-bones style calls to mind the stark, monochromatic images of iconic documentary photographers like Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, that’s no accident. They’ve influenced him just as much as representational painters like Edward Hopper have, says Hunter. “That’s part of my visual language,” he notes. “I’m trying to create something that looks halfway between a photograph and a dream.”
Find Hunter’s work at West Branch Gallery, Stowe, VT; McLarry Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM; Illume Gallery of Fine Art, St. George, UT; Gallery North Star, Grafton, VT; and Davis & Blevins Gallery, Saint Jo, TX.
This story was featured in the January 2019 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art January 2019 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
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