ARTIST’S STATEMENT
My creative process begins with the collecting of discarded snapshots from flea markets and the Internet.
My interest in the casual, vernacular snapshot is its link to a history or memory that can no longer be accessed. The inaccessible nature of these memories—or stories—has led me to a preoccupation with inventing new narratives for the objects and figures depicted in the photographs. By doing so, I reclaim these anonymous people and objects, giving them new “histories” that reflect the imagery from my own life experience and personal dreamscapes. The resulting new narratives often reflect a dark, mysterious, and intrinsically Gothic view of America: suburbs leach danger, authority figures evince moral turpitude, nature threatens, and the surface of all things belies the more messy, complicated realities of being human. The works are saved from being unrelentingly gloomy by a consistently wry sense of humor.
After having culled a selection from hundreds of snapshots, I identify elements in each photo that are intriguing—a figure, a bit of architecture, a family pet—and remove them from their original context. I then combine them with details from other photographs, creating what is essentially a collage. When the drawings are finished, however, all traces of collage are erased, leaving the viewer with a sense of unease about how these elements have come to exist within the same mise en scène.
The surface texture of the drawings, a result of rubbing the charcoal into the fibre of the rag paper, creates a dream-like atmosphere that’s in direct service to the subject matter.
CRITICAL OPINION
“For Hunt, drawing has become a way to bring the real world and the unconscious and imaginary seamlessly together. These images, are at once familiar and disconcerting. We know what we are seeing but we are not sure why these things go together or if they should go together.”
—Brett Littman, Former Executive Director, The Drawing Center, NYC
“The intense, exquisite realism of Hunt’s technique is in dynamic contrast to the surrealism of the scenes he depicts, and this disjunction contributes to their arresting, dreamlike atmosphere. Each tells a story, but we are not told what story it tells. The result is a mystifying intimacy, the feeling that we have interrupted the scene and are now indelibly a part of it.”