The Art of Bill Hutson is a unique citywide exhibition celebrating the work of artist and San Marcos native Bill Hutson. As part of the show, the Texas State Galleries at Texas State University, San Marcos is featuring a six-piece installation of works by Hutson, the centerpiece of which is “Homestead with signs, symbols and numbers.” This massive painting — over 6 x 9 feet — is accompanied by five preparatory studies for the work, including a sculpture titled “Shotgun for Elton Fax.” The exhibition is on view in the Texas State Galleries foyer through May 18.
Bill Hutson was born in San Marcos in 1936. After graduating from high school in 1954, he entered the Air Force and in 1960, went to San Francisco, where he attended classes at the San Francisco Academy of Art. The artist moved to New York in 1963 and in the decades that followed also lived abroad in England, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Nigeria and Senegal. He has been the subject of more than 20 solo exhibitions and has participated in over fifty group shows. His works are in numerous private and public collections, including The Brooklyn Museum, The Studio Museum and The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
The display of “Homestead with signs, symbols and numbers” is part of the first presentation of Hutson’s art in his hometown of San Marcos, and derives from the artist’s memory of his family’s multigenerational property at 733 Center Street. The painting contains numerous references to the site and to San Marcos, references that hold personal significance for the artist. According to Hutson, the confluence of abstraction and representation, coupled with the overlapping of forms and lack of depth over all, allows for a composition that is free of a specific time or space — as elusive as the memories it represents.
“...there was an invincible quality about San Marcos, a concealed magnetism, covert vitality and sacrosanct ambiance generated by the town’s past…I wanted to convey the natural and metaphysical dimensions of a homestead,” Bill Hutson wrote.
The fragility and the irony of the notion of ‘home’ and, specifically, ‘homesteading’ is reinforced by the painting’s title. A ‘homestead’ refers to a house with adjoining buildings and land, but also to the Homestead Act of 1862, which granted ownership of ‘public’ land to U.S. citizens and heads of household after five years of ‘proving up’ on their claim. Neither Native Americans, who lived on the land long before it was ‘settled,’ nor Black Americans claimed these lands; indeed, they were still denied equal access to most public facilities when Hutson himself was a child.
He writes: “In a subtle manner this tragic paradox, of ‘home’ located in a place with a significant and recent history of oppression, bondage and insecurity, is conveyed in Homestead with signs, symbols and numbers.”
For more information about Texas State Galleries, visit txstgalleries.org or follow us on social media @txstgalleries. Texas State Galleries is located in the Joann Cole Mitte Building at the corner of West Sessom Drive and North Comanche Street on the campus of Texas State University.
