"This Series is my expression of joy in witnessing dancers alive within the music. For me, painting my photographs, enhances the vibrant movements of pretty bodies in motion. I coax ancestral rhythms and seductive patterns into tangible form to excite and enlighten the viewer."
-Adrienne Walker Hoard
Adrienne Walker Hoard is a Kansas City-based artist, writer and educator. Her work has exhibited nationally and internationally, including a traveling exhibition of the Smithsonian Institution, the National Museum of the American Indian. Hoard is a former Fulbright Scholar to South Korea, research fellow to South Africa, and professor emeritus of fine art and Black Studies at UMKC
Painted Poses includes eight new works, each a photograph of dancers in motion painted with oil pastel and metallic ink. By painting the surface, Hoard activates the still images and amplifies the movement to capture the passion and energy of the original dance performance. Beauty, movement and peace are the themes of this exhibition. Although the works are small in scale, the abstracted details and glowing color demand a closer look. The exhibit also includes Amulets of Transformation, exquisite handmade jewelry of semi-precious gemstones, each with healing and spiritual benefits. The exhibit’s celebration of dance and beauty is a therapeutic reminder of the need for Art in today’s uncertain time.
ABOUT artist Adrienne Walker Hoard
Dr. Adrienne Walker Hoard received her doctorate degree in the psychology of visual perception from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL, in 1986 and her Master of Fine Arts in painting and 2-D design from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, MI, in 1972.
Hoard has served as the director of Black Studies program and a professor of Fine Arts at UMKC. Similarly, she served as a professor of Black Studies and Fine Art at The Ohio State University. She has received recognition as a distinguished professor at two South Korean and two South African universities. Hoard has served as chair of the department of art education for the Louisiana State University School of Art. While in New York, Hoard served as head of adult education for the Brooklyn Museum. Since 1993, she has owned Homegirl, Inc., a creative arts company, which supports her new ART by ADRIENNE, LLC. Recently, Hoard led the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art’s Community Advisory Group for the exhibit, 30 Americans (2019). Hoard’s research into the psychology of the visual perception of color and shape, as well as the link between indigenous visual abstraction and the Black aesthetic, has had a profound impact on her development as an artist.
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For more info on the artist, visit: homegirlinc.com/women-warriors.html or homegirl49.etsy.com
Image: Adrienne Walker Hoard, Painted Poses: Dual Strut I, 2020, Mixed Media
