Sterling Clinton Hundley, (b. 1976) is an American painter and draftsman based in Richmond, VA. He’s a professor in the School of Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU).
Hundley’s work draws into light imperceptible phenomena through the excavation of compressed sequential imagery to reveal the influence of the unseen.
From murals, exhibitions, installations, book covers to magazines, Hundley’s diverse and distinct creative voice has garnered international acclaim through commissions from clients including Criterion Collection, The New Yorker, The Grammys, Folio Society, Abrams, Atlantic Monthly, The United States Post Office, NASA and the New York Times. Sterling’s work been recognized by The Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, Graphis, The Museum of American Illustration, the Delaware Art Museum, Communication Arts Magazine, Print Magazine and many others. He is the recipient of numerous awards from the Society of Illustrators New York and the “Best Overall” and “Best Illustrated Book” awards from the Victoria & Albert Museum in London England.
Hundley’s work is held in private collections internationally, from Russia, Norway, England, Germany and throughout the United States and can be found in the collections of Amazon, the Museum of American Illustration, the US Senate Building, Capital One Bank, and Rolling Stone.
A Familiar Interval
Through the series, A Familiar Interval, Hundley addresses time as an influential and unseen phenomena in our daily lives.
Working canvases embedded throughout the artist’s home; stored behind cabinets, under sofas, chairs and tables are routinely revisited so that fleeting moments can be chronicled. With a new layer for each new sitting, time is captured between individual layers of drawings.
Buried within these layers are daily observations of a life familiar- children playing, a dog sleeping, a cat eating, a woman resting. In the studio, away from a home life in perpetual motion, layers are carved, cut and torn to read like compressed cells of an animation, revealing the influence of time as light cuts across a room, children grow older, and a family life unfolds.
The resulting drawings are ordered, yet chaotic; familiar yet abstract with images resurfacing as forgotten moments. These embedded canvases are further curated through line, pattern, shape and color.
The Process
Hundley’s work consists of two composition styles, the smaller pieces that consist of mainly blacks and browns with small amounts of color are the studies of the large oil paintings. Hundley’s creation of his studies is quite compelling. He will begin with a panel and every day he will lay pieces of brown packing tape and draw what he sees at that time. If you were to turn the piece around you would see the ends of the pieces of tape and dates written on the tape strips.
Hundley will add new layers of tape and capture typical life moments. When he feels enough layers have developed, Hundley will take an exacto knife and cut into the tape to reveal an entirely new composition comprised of his daily observations. New forms, objects, and elements are discovered, which create an alluring result that appears disorderly yet beautiful.
Once the study is completed, Hundley will place it in a frame and then use an encaustic glazing process to preserve it. The encaustic process consists of the mixing of pigment and hot wax which is then burned together to create an inlay. Hundley doesn’t use a lot of pigment, and the cloudy appearance of the studies you’re seeing, is the encaustic layer.
The large paintings are created using the studies and they incorporate a lot more color; Hundley will paint the study’s configuration solely in oil. As you observe the final presentation you’ll discover familiar and unfamiliar objects.
Words from the Artist
“These works have been startling in their clarity and candidness, as the choice to sacrifice one element reveals a lost moment that has been covered and forgotten. The work presented in A Familiar Interval is a marriage of process, intent, inquiry and relationships that reconfirms the beauty found in the familiar.”
Sterling Hundley
All of the paintings featured above are a part of A Familiar Interval series, and can now be found in our gallery!
Click Here to visit Sterling Hundley’s artist page on our website. For inquiries or to request Sterling’s inventory, please contact info@principlegallery.com
Principle Gallery 