Pete Hubbard's Art

Art, like most things is just a series of tricks. Draw a line, put a dark color on one side, put a light color on the other side and voila! A landscape. That’s all there is to it. The rest of it is style and execution; make it look like you know what you’re doing. That’s about all there is to getting through life; just act like you know what you’re doing. Art is no different.

The heavy part, the part where you think you’re doing something important is sort of like the Alchemists of years ago. They would tell the kings and bishops they could turn water into wine or lead into gold. But what they were really doing was investigating how the world worked. Then there were also the con artists who could care less how the world worked, they were just trying to make a buck or a farthing or whatever. But that’s another story.

That’s what artists are doing. We tell everybody we are making pretty pictures for their entertainment but what we are really doing is trying to peek behind the curtain. We are mapping the psyche of the human mind... And among artists we also have our con artists. (Who will remain nameless but whose initials are BLEEP)

As to landscapes, I’m confident Turner, Constable and Cezanne (they all just painted fancy horizontal lines) would all feel comfortable with my landscapes. But in addition to those luminaries of the painting world I also take into account Picasso, Duchamp and Warhol. They painted lines in other dimensions.

But it’s all just tricks, fooling us into going places we wouldn’t otherwise go, leaving us with thoughts we didn’t know we could think. That’s the peeking behind the curtain part.