Please join us Friday, March 6th for the opening of our next show, “The View From Here,” new works by Cristina Hobbs.
Working from direct observation of the Northern California landscape, I begin with what I see but move toward reduction. My paintings translate place into layered planes of color, softened edges, and controlled gesture. Rather than describing a specific location, I distill its structure — the tension between horizon and ground, weight and openness, form and dissolution.
The work hovers between recognition and abstraction. Hills flatten into tonal bands. Reflections fragment. Sky becomes atmosphere rather than backdrop. Through layered washes and restrained mark-making, I build depth without density, allowing space to remain active and quiet at once.
Influenced by both the atmospheric sensitivity of Romantic landscape painting and the compositional restraint of East Asian screens, I seek a visual language that holds presence without narrative. These paintings are rooted in landscape, but they are ultimately about translation — how memory simplifies, compresses, and reshapes what we see.
