Isis Hockenos

Isis Hockenos is a painter living and working in the Bay Area who is influenced by the wind and the salt and the craggy shores of the Northern California coast, while being inspired too by the urban angles of the cities in which she has lived. She studied visual arts and creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College, NY and printmaking at Fondazione Il Bisonte in Florence, Italy. Isis works primarily on oils. She is interested in incidental gender dynamics both physical, through the lens of task and labor, and emotional, through interpersonal relationships. These interests are juxtaposed with a strong connection to her natural environment and to an affinity for narrative. Many of her paintings are part of a larger series that emerged from experiences with task and specifically repetitive task, often through the lens of food, food production and the relationship we have with what we grow, build and eat. Most recently, in her role at a local butcher shop, two women, standing side by side, tasked with breaking down ducks, stuffing quail, cleaning hanger steak. Consistency requires precision, outcomes uniform, uniforms identical but while their hands move in sync their minds and spirits and desires remain unique. While her own experience exists on an intimate scale, Isis recognizes in images of factory workers overseas or of soldiers in lives as far away from mine as the moon, something familiar. She hopes to evoke, through color and language that are distinctly her own, the recognition of a universal experience. Isis has exhibited locally and internationally including at Vorres Gallery, San Francisco, Sandra Lee Gallery, San Francisco, Gallery Route One, Pt. Reyes Station, Sagan Piechota Architecture, San Francisco, Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Ana, and at Galleri Oxholm, Copenhagen, DK. In Spring 2017 she worked with The Midway Gallery to curate Rhizosphere: Celebrating West Marin’s artists & creative legacy from 1960-today, a sprawling survey of over sixty artists living and working in her native West Marin County.