Pushing Paint is an exhibit in the UW-Whitewater University Center’s Roberta’s Gallery that shows the audience what you can uniquely do with paint. By layering colors of paint and moving it around, the featured artist Derek Hambly can capture a photo-like picture on a canvas that makes the audience feel like they are seeing the scene in real time.
“I became an artist because my parents were artists in music and encouraged me to partake in the arts. As a child, I would draw a lot in my parent’s books all day and in the library that we had,” Hambly said.
Hambly has been painting for over 50 years, he started when he was 4 and found it difficult to pay attention in classes since he liked using his imagination and daydreamed a lot. Hambly uses the influence of Australia in his art, he keeps a painting of the building he built with him as an homage to his time in Australia. His paintings are based on the elements of nature, he goes by his saying, “If you don’t have a composition, you don’t have anything.”
He always finds inspiration around him, he explained how he sees the painting already being made when he sees the inspiration in front of him. Hambly’s advice to artists is, “If you got it in you, you gotta do it.”
Hambly’s process of painting is letting the paint guide to where it wants to go. He never forces the paint to go in one direction or the other, but he will try different variations until he is content with the painting in front of him. He describes the state that he’s in similarly to a high, he gets a great buzz out of painting. He never feels burnt out and always finds a new project to work on and to keep him busy. He builds his canvases and has the edges carved in to help make his paintings pop more and he uses a big majority of his earnings to put back into his paintings.
“Walk Bridge,” “Geese on Pond with Barns,” “Mid Summer Bark River,” and “Sun Power Flowers” are some of his paintings displayed in the art gallery.
“Walk Bridge” is a piece based on oil paint that’s set in the fall season. The trees are a mixture of orange, yellow, brown and green, the paint is vibrant toward the front of the canvas but gets darker, giving the illusion that the canvas is sinking in as the walkway is getting smaller. In front of the canvas, Hambly uses a mix of vibrant red, orange, blue and magenta. For the walkway, he uses pastel colors as well as a white and brown colors to show the fence on the side. From a close-up, you can see the layers of paint that he uses, but as you step further away, you start to see the canvas transform into a picture. When you look closely, you can see where Hambly has moved the paint and the direction changes, for such simplistic movements, it brings out the piece and you can imagine yourself in that scene perfectly.
“Geese on a Pond with Barns” is an oil painting based on a spring-like season. Hambly has great attention to detail in this piece, as the feathers look identical to the feathers of geese. The variations of cool-toned colors on the pond help the illusion of how the pond moves and how the pond sinks in by using darker colors along the edges. Hambly uses great detail on the shadow of the geese on the pond and the branch that is poking out of the pond. The leaves on the plant in front of the canvas help with the illusion of the audience sitting closely and watching the geese go about their business. Lastly, the scenery behind the pond is beautifully done and the perception is great because it would make sense that the closer something is to the canvas the more detailed it should be, and the farther back it is, the simpler the design can be.
“Mid Summer Bark River” is an oil-based painting that is set either in summer or spring season. This painting shows the amount of detail that Hambly pays attention to, from the flow of the water to the attention to detail on the plants and trees. This painting is very cool-toned based on some warm color accents from the plants up front. The main focus is the water movement and the island to the right side where the trees stem out. The painting makes you feel calm and serene when you look at it and you can imagine yourself being in that scene and what the breeze would feel like as you look upon the moving waters.
“Sun Power Flowers” is an oil-based painting that is set in the summer. The painting accurately represents what a sunflower field looks like through the lens of a camera. The painting is simplistic and abstract. The bold sunflowers towards the front of the canvas are a big contrast to the pastel colors in the back. Towards the front, you can see the details of the stems but further back you only see the heads of the sunflower. The canvas makes it seem as though the sunflowers are moving with a gentle breeze by the directions in which the sunflowers are placed.
“I like the ‘Miners Cottage’ drawing because it has a great story to go along with it,” graduate assistant Veena Johnson said. “Hambly painted the ‘Miners Cottage’ without ever going inside to find the gold that was hidden among the floorboards. He found out later that there was about a million dollars worth of gold in there.”
Johnson mentioned how the exhibit brings authentic self-expression, breaking boundaries, and inspiring connection by evoking emotion beyond words or societal norms. She added how the gallery would love to have his artwork back since he has created a lot of pieces and the gallery can do an exhibit of his abstract art.
The Pushing Paint exhibit by Derek Hambly is open until Dec. 11, the gallery is open from 10 a.m. through 4:30 p.m. Monday-Thursday, and is open Fridays 10 a.m.- 2 p.m. To find out about future exhibits that will be showcased, look on the gallery’s website.
