March is the Month to Revise Assumptions: Encounter Libby Hawk Paintings at Arts Advocates
Think Saturday. Almost unlimited things to do. Some options are always there — wash the car, clean the oven, shop. Others pop up for “limited time only.” Revise Assumptions / Libby Hawk Paintings tops the “limited time only” category. These provocative, eye-filling paintings are only on view during Saturdays in March from 2 – 4 pm at Arts Advocates Gallery (The Crossings at Siesta Key Mall, 3501 South Tamiami Trail, Sarasota). The show offers viewers an innovative and engaging visual experience not to be missed. Meet the artist, ask questions, wander amidst the art during the Opening Reception and Gallery Talk from 2 – 4 on Saturday, March 1, 2025. Other exhibit dates include Saturday, March 8, 15 and 29 from 2 – 4 pm, with an Artist’s Conversation on March 15. (www.artsadvocates.org www.libbyhawkartmaker.com)
Revise Assumptions dares viewers to engage differently with works on canvas and paper, while challenging norms about two-and three-dimensional art. Libby Hawk’s abstracts on paper and canvas vibrate with color and texture, at once subtle and bold. Captive to the idea of “freeing painting from the frame,” she expands ways viewers interact with art, alters the experience, even slowing it down.
Two-sided paintings, like vintage 45 rpm records, offer a full theme and variation in one work. Painted folded paper strips hang, kinetic, changing. Others, attached to the artist’s inventive metal or bamboo “gates,” express varied visual moods as the viewer moves around and the painting surfaces catch and play back the invisible air currents. Large-scale wall-mounted paintings, whether on shaped canvas or flat paper, reveal expansive compositions and colors.
The Sarasota artist’s vision for this show sharpened over the past few years. She says, “I’m drawn to the challenges posed by working with diverse media — changing it up is essential to realize innovative ideas and the imagined world of Revise Assumptions.” Her love of making in three-dimensions, particularly using clay, fueled her exploration of unconventional painting forms, especially an appreciation of paper, the way it tears, folds, moves.
Libby Hawk explains: “I explore materials to create mainly three-dimensional works that may move in space. Removing painting from two dimensions opens unlimited sculptural possibilities and that’s exciting.” The artist’s 2024 solo installation, What She Could See, exhibited at the Ringling College Englewood Art Center, created a singular visual and spatial experience beckoning viewers to move with and through the art encouraging them follow multiple points of view.
After a career in New York advancing human rights and women’s equality, including at the United Nations Women’s Fund, she resumed her art practice in 2017. Libby Hawk has been included in national and regional shows receiving multiple awards, including the Halo Arts Fellowship in 2021. Currently, she makes her studio home at SPAACES (2051 Princeton Street, Sarasota, FL 34237) a nonprofit artist and cultural organization that promotes contemporary and social practice art.
A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Libby Hawk studied at the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford, England and earned an MFA from the City University of New York. Her paintings and ceramics have been shown at Art Center Sarasota, Manatee Art Center, Gainesville Fine Arts Association, Florida Craft/Art, Mara Gallery + Studio, Define Art Gallery among others. She teaches ceramics at Suncoast Technical College and is a member of Women Contemporary Artists (WCA).
Photos from Libby Hawk