Finn Hewes

In This Exhibition

Past Works

Constantly drawing from surrealism, I have great respect for the subconscious. Much of my work is born of techniques like automatic drawing, dream journaling, and chance operations. My work is almost always exploratory; rather than computationally working through a predefined set of ideas, I react. I search. I set out to ask fresh and potent questions with each piece of work. They don’t often come with an answer key, and in fact, often require a bit of “chewing”. I’m not interested in spoon-feeding ideas to people.

My practice spans a variety of mediums, from traditional oil paintings on handmade canvases, to hand-poked tattoos and biological sculptures. I enjoy doing things myself, with little mechanical assistance. It’s certainly faster and easier to tattoo with a reciprocating electrical machine or order premade canvases on Amazon, but I would argue that something is lost in this delegation (avoidance) of labor. Mundane, repetitive tasks take on the role of meditative exercises, and I find that this allows me to connect more deeply with my craft while also shouldering more of the burden/responsibility of production.

Through my process, common threads have emerged. These include thoughts about time on a planetary or evolutionary scale, and the exponential, fractal, and self-reflective/self-reflexive qualities of nature. I’m also interested in exploring the formation of language and identity and characterizing both as ultimately deficient enterprises. I’m constantly drawn back to the acutely individualized, but also broadly shared experience of existing within a body and using it.

The Western World loves to romanticize and insist upon the connection of our egos (or essence) to our minds, and our minds to our brains and subsequent bodies. This cannot be the only way. We must resist this imposed, surface-level existence, and insist upon a relationship with and interrogation of the (multiple) self that is housed in, but not inherently tied to the body. I ask myself: How can I distill this feeling into an image? How can I make others see the multitude of humanity in themselves and the dimensionality of themselves in the rest of humanity?

I enjoy engaging with mythical, absurdist, and ironic images that disconcert. I’m excited by what happens when a person is forced to confront an aspect of themselves in a work of art and re-examine their relationship to a closely held idea. My goal as an artist is to sometimes gently, and other times more forcefully, remind viewers of the spectacular happenings of the universe around us, as well as of the random impossibility and absurd beauty of human existence.