Watercolorist paints the extraordinary.
By: Matthew Kirdahy
He has shown his art all over the state and in New York City. His experience and interaction in the art world stretches across the country as far as New Mexico. Now he has a show in Cranbury.
Bill Hogan of Bucks County, Pa., who says he is a painter and drawer of allegorical and surrealistic visions, will have his work on display at the Gourgaud Gallery in Town Hall during February.
The exhibit will open today (Friday) with an artist’s reception from 6 to 8 p.m. Admission is free and refreshments will be available.
Mr. Hogan will be there to greet the gallery patrons. His sketches and watercolors will be for sale.
Mr. Hogan has been involved in art professionally for about 30 years. He has worked as an illustrator for the U.S. Army based in San Antonio, Texas, and has studied art at the University of the Americas in Mexico. Later, he moved back to his native New Jersey and took a job as an editorial illustrator and cartoonist with The Record in Hackensack.
He has had his work on display at the Newark, Morris and Bergen museums and also has some of his collections decorating the offices and halls of some Columbia Records, Squibb Pharmaceuticals, U.S. Army and Goya Foods locations.
Mr. Hogan said he tries never to display the same work twice.
"In the last 30 years, I’ve had a lot of shows," he said. "In the one-man shows, I never show the same thing twice because if you keep doing that and using your work over and over again, you’re not going to do anything more. I always like to stir the creative energies to do something new."
For the Cranbury show, Mr. Hogan has created a series of surreal watercolors and two sketches. He titled one of the sketches "Look to the Future." It’s a 40-by-30-inch drawing with large heads in the foreground, one looking toward the horizon, the other looking away. A set of train tracks trails off into waves breaking on a shore. Numbers le on the tracks counting up from five toward the background.
Mr. Hogan said he focuses his work on the extraordinary because that’s simply what he envisions.
"That’s what I’ve been doing for a long time," he said. "There’s a lot of musical joy and fun in my paintings and sketches. It’s a little bit of everything. That’s the way I look at things. That’s my vision."
The Gourgaud Gallery is open Monday through Friday from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 3 p.m.