BIOGRAPHY
Brought up in the 1960’s on a farm in England, Biddy was constantly observing life and death cycles. Educated in Yorkshire & Oxford she then went onto world travel, settling for 2o years in Lincolnshire to raise her four children. During this period following a severe back injury she became deeply interested in Eastern philosophy to cope with Western Life. In mid life following divorce she attended Stamford College for foundation and then was awarded a place at the world renowned Chelsea College of Art (UNiversity of the Arts London) where she developed her deep love of colour, drawing, photography and painting. She graduated at 52 years of age in 2011.
Her inspiration comes from close observations of lifecycles with particular focus on flowers, plants and moulds. The endless metamorphic process – often the beauty and luminosity exists in the decay – not just the ripeness of youth. Whilst colours can be vivid they are offset against their own inevitable deterioration and loss. Biddy concentrates on the intensity of colours and then deliberately erases and bleaches away great swathes by using harmful agents such as acid to speed up the natural process of decay. Her works have focussed around mythology, superstitions, “Old Wives Tales” the influences of the matriarch and the religions of western Culture – all these and more have led her into this unique form of alchemy.
CV
2011 Chelsea UAL Degree Show. 2011
2011 Clyde & Co art prize
2011 Debut Contemporary – Notting Hill London
2012 Agora Gallery New York – PAthway to Abstraction
2012 Steel Rooms Brigg Eng. – Solo Exhibition
2013 Agora New York
2013 Global Art Agency – Young Art Vienna
2014 Grand Designs London
2014/15 Lincoln Cathedral – Artist in residence
2012-22 Shown through private exhibitions and sold through Coastal Gallery Lymington; Alex Hammersley Art; Hollandridge Group; Supplied many works for superyachts via Terence Disdale Ltd., also work to commission for many specialist interior design projects
STATEMENT
Biddy Hodgkinson’s paintings are inspired by close observations of life cycles. She has a particular fascination with the luminosity that exists in decay; the way that it can present the unexpected and often startlingly beautiful patterns that are sometimes comparable to, but often outstrip, the monotone brightness of ripeness and youth.
Her focus is on the infinite range of variation in the process of decay and deterioration and what it teaches us about our own media and advertising-taught notions of our supposedly perpetually extendable youth.
Hodgkinson uses harmful agents, such as acids, to deliberately eat away swathes of colour showing them in the context of their own negation; as it would be in nature.
Her paintings investigate the unexpected vibrancy of rotting and death. As Wallace Stevens wrote “Death is the mother of Beauty”
