Dannielle Hodson

While my large-scale oil paintings teem with physiological details – a grotesquely comic multitude of human and animal eyes, teeth and limbs – these figurative elements evolve out of a kind of primordial abstraction. Each work begins with a process of unplanned, almost automatic mark making, during which I’m concerned not with creating imagery, but rather with channeling energy from the world outside the canvas onto its flat, bounded plane. Once enough pigment has been amassed, it starts to suggest motifs, in much the same way as certain clouds seem to mimic the shapes of Earthly objects, or shadows on the lunar surface summon up a “man in the moon”. (This subcortical characteristic of visual perception is known as pareidolia, and is intimately connected to the human fight or flight response).
Aware of the embryonic faces pressing through my paint, I work consciously towards bringing them into full being. This is a process that involves both embellishment and sublimation, creation and destruction, and one that tracks my shifting focus, stimuli and emotional state over the gestation period of a given canvas. The result is a seething mass of pigment, in which the physical boundaries between one monstrous, cartoonish figure and anot...

2019- Now: Turps Banana Painting school offsite/onsite

2015/17: MA Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, London

1998/2001: BA Womens Wear Fashion at Central Saint Martins, London.

2021
Outsider Art/Kindred Spirits, Harley Gallery, Nottinghamshire
Art on a Postcard, Soho Revue Gallery, London
Another Kind of Life, Solo show, Four You Gallery, Online
In the Eye of The Beholder, Four You Gallery, Online

2019
Miniscule, in association with Cross Lane Projects, Venice.
Face to Face, London contemporary Art Auction, Warsaw
Empire II, Oaxaca In Association with the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca.
Miniscule, Cross Lane Projects, Kendal, UK

2018
Empire II Tallinn Art Week in Association with Haus Gallery
Journeys: Outside In, Sotheby's London.
Bainbridge Open, ASC Gallery, London

2017
Badenfahrt festival, Switzerland.
Empire II, Venice, Brussels, Berlin, Kendall.
An Art School, Tate Exchange

2016
Big Deal No 10 Q Carpark London
National Open Art Competition, Winner of Roy Pace Moving Image award, Exhibited at Mercers Hall, London
Open Call, Lights Of Soho, London.
10 years of Outside In, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester.
Root Of New, Botanical Gardens Moscow, Russia.
CGP Open, London (received curators commendation)

2015
Art on a Postcard, Hepititis C trust, Soho Revue Gallery.
Open Submission, Lights Of Soho, London.
Art As Opportunity 'Made Corrections' Mother Gallery...