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Hope Gangloff

Study - East Village Looking East - July 4, 2016, 2016
Acrylic and cut paper on canvas
60 × 36 in
Hope Gangloff lives in the East Village in New York City. She is married to a painter, Benjamin Degen - whose work I really like. He also draws the figure, but his don't seem to be portraiture like his wife's work. Hope's studio is in Queens, she loves her studio. I think that is such an important aspect of being an artist, having a space that inspires you. Having a studio space that makes her happy to go to work seems to allow her to create amazing work. She tends to do portraits of people she knows well, people that she loves. An article a read says that she tends to paint the same people over and over- like her close friends or her husband. I really enjoy when artist do multiple iterations of specifics works, in this case she paints people over and over again, another reason why her portraits are so successful. Her colors are super vibrant and her palettes are untraditional. It seems like she picks her colors to portrait a mood not to be exact about the colors that actually existed at the time of the sitting. She was born in 1974 in New York - which makes her only 6 years older than me. Whenever I see artists as successful as hope who are so close to my age I really think about what I'm doing as an artist or in life in general to be successful or at least get my work out into the world. Her work has so much emotion, movement, and style. It is different and unique in a way that appeals to a large audience and so she has lots of collectors, which isn't super common for portrait work of other people. After reading a few articles about her, I think the two things that I want to incorporate into my work is to not be afraid to work on a really large scale (size and color) and to do things over and over again.


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