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KATHY HOFMANN

These quiet, intimate paintings recall the work of the Barbizon painters and Luminist style of the Hudson River School. Inspired by the rural surroundings of her childhood, Kathy Hofmann paints with an intense focus and a lifelong passion for the family farmstead. While soaking in the atmospheric haze of the sunlit fields surrounding her, the artist feels the friendly and familiar gaze of cows following her every move.

Kathy Hofmann's work glorifies the Wisconsin landscape while simultaneously and subtly evoking a eulogy to such a seemingly idyllic landscape under threat of modernization. With an MFA in painting from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Kathy Hofmann's exquisite works of art have earned her many awards and high praise.

Living at the gateway of the driftless region of southwestern Wisconsin with its amazingly rich visual landscape of hills, valleys, coulees, streams, and pastures provides virtually unlimited subjects. I seek those fleeting moments when the light turns an otherwise ordinary scene into something extraordinary. For example, moments of fleeting light that illuminate a foggy pasture in the morning or a hilltop at sunset.

When I am looking at landscapes, I am always looking for this melding of light and atmosphere and gradations of light, color, tone, value and shape. These are the things that really inspire me as a painter and bring me to that level of wanting to take it into the studio to be able to play with those gradations of light that are melting into the distance. 

While my paintings are of contemporary places, I find inspiration in 19th-century painting methods, ideals, and traditions of Luminism and the Barbizon school. I work in the modern medium of acrylic yet achieve the look of oil with techniques that create transparency and the effect of atmospheric light.   

Painting for me is more than just an empirical interpretation of landscape. It’s about my subjective experience as well, which is a product of my history, education, influences and emotions. When the layers of light start passing through the paint and begin to represent the emotive quality and the play of light that I observed when I was viewing the scene, that’s when I most enjoy being in the studio.

In all art forms that are good, truthful and interesting, it is important to have balance, the kind that mimics the human condition. Dark against light, warm against cool, ambiguity against clarity texture against flatness in a rhythmic way.

My hope is that my work increases people’s appreciation of the landscape, even causing them to pull over on rural highways or county trunks to take in a scene they might otherwise just rush by. Maybe stop and appreciate an old oak tree, watch the light, look at the color of the sky, its effects on the shapes in the landscape, and how forms fade into the distance.

To see more of Kathy Hofmann’s available work, please click HERE