Vincent Hoisington

(1924-1972)

Untitled (The Sun)

Footnotes

Provenance
Estate of Rosalind Ratnam

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Vincent Hoisington (1924-1972) was a self-taught artist of Sri Lankan descent, famously recognised for his pioneering practice of aluminium art in Singapore. His explorations in three-dimensional form were preceded by a painting practice centred on his interest in European masters such as Michelangelo and Rembrandt. These points of reference, combined with Hoisington's informal training in art, shaped a distinctive voice deviated from an art-historical narrative heavily skewed towards the idyllic kampong life. 
 
Not bound by formal training, unlike many of his contemporaries, Hoisington's paintings demonstrate spontaneity and bold experimentation with materials available at the time. Their highly energetic surfaces are created using scraping tools, dynamic drips and smears, and swift brushwork.
 
In this painting, the orange sun's warmth against a contrasting an almost smoggy green sky appears emerging out of the negative space after scraping away and scraping on layers of splashed paint. Hoisington's "rough" treatment of his paint surfaces recalls the ideology behind Rembrandt's idiosyncratic roughness, the tactile quality of the paint texture deepening the visual experience of his work. 
 
The Sun is an intriguing concoction of art paradoxes; The striking contrasts between lights and dark read as chiaroscuro-inspired yet the distinctly modern flatness and abstraction of a traditional landscape scene. Hoisington developed and featured such a contradiction-filled visual language to echo the nation's industrialization and urban development. 
 
His work is "a dissenting voice" among the romanticism of the Nanyang Style, more often only seen in the second generation of Singaporean artists. Hoisington's body of work is a unique and very emotionally resonant voice in early Singapore art history. He produced a diverse body of work that undoubtedly enriched the local art scene until his untimely death in 1972, at the age of 48.