Vincent Hoisington

(1924-1972)

Untitled (Still Life)

Footnotes

Provenance
Estate of Rosalind Ratnam

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Characteristic of a major early phase of artist Vincent Hoisington's (1924-1972) oeuvre, this early flower still life painting is emblematic of Hoisington's innovative and unique practice.

Most strikingly, Hoisington's painting style recalls the modern style of action painting. Dribbling, splashing, and smearing paint onto the canvas, rather than carefully applying it, one can almost track Hoisington's physical act of painting in Still Life. Yet his gestural abstraction paradoxically still highly representational; The vibrant flowers are clearly recognisable in the splats of paint, conscious shading of the white vase to give it three-dimension form and weight. Hoisington's skill turns squiggles, which may seem purposeless in isolation, into delicate shadows between petals.

A self-taught artist, Hoisington gravitated towards traditional western genres when the Nanyang school and watercolour artists were dominant. As such, these works offer a different perspective to the story of modern Singapore art that deviates from local themes and the emergent wave of non-objective abstraction in the 1970s.

As a result, Hoisington's practice almost seems like an anomaly in art history, particularly Singapore's painting history. An abstract action painting yet representational; A still life that is an explosion of colour and heavy, textured brushwork; Soft and delicate subject matter is depicted through almost industrial scratching techniques; Highly Western subject matter and techniques executed in Singapore by a Sri Lankan artist. His contemporary artist Ng Eng Teng even joked that Hoisington was the only artist in Singapore painting flowers and bridges during their time.

These contradictions make Hoisington and his work such an intriguing part of Singapore's art history. They highlight diversity and agency in post-war Singapore art that is rarely seen.