Shara Hughes is widely recognized for her inventive landscape paintings and interiors, which probe the boundary between representation and abstraction through an embrace of the artist’s own subconscious. Hughes’s paintings exude a psychological complexity that derives from an idiosyncratic coalescence of memory, observation, and illusionism. The artist brings to life a world that is elegantly chaotic – infused with a vibrant harmony of the organic, the objective, and the surreal. Sinuous forms and spatial distortions coincide with expressive brushstrokes and a vivid color palette to exude an illusionistic sense of whimsy that is simultaneously otherworldly and familiar. Hughes’s futuristic landscapes recall the illusory outdoor environments of Charles Burchfield, where evocative, semiabstract forms express a mystical sensitivity to weather and light, yet her vibrant palettes create a joyful atmosphere reminiscent of Matisse’s Fauvist landscapes.