Positively Earnest

Klowden Mann
February 16–March 23, 2019
Los Angeles

From the Klowden Mann announcement:​

Positively Earnest centers around Hubby’s longstanding interest in the forms through which language defines daily experience. With this series, Hubby works directly with the written word in the form of text paintings and photographs displaying positive adages. The words function as positive self-talk: the artist’s wish for how she exists in the world, and for how she views herself and is viewed by others. The painted works are interspersed with photographic self-portraits that depict the artist, arms raised in front of a variety of idyllic landscapes from behind with a word written across her bottom, each photo with a different word: ebullient, empathetic, celestial, earnest, valiant, serene, majestic.  

The act of painting these words is a physical manifestation of experience-dependent neuroplasticity—changing neural pathways through positive environment and reinforcement—as well as a way of taking on ideas of artistic legacy. Hubby’s work comfortably plays with—and off of—the tropes of an art world that often seems to fear emotional expression and joy, and does so with humor that both embraces and mocks those tropes, while working to expand their purview.

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