Reggie Burrows Hodges (b. 1965, Compton, California) is a painter whose works explore storytelling and visual metaphor. Hodges’ works uncover universal subjects such as identity, community, truth, and memory, and often draw inspiration from his childhood in Compton. Starting from a black ground, he develops the scene around his figures with painterly, foggy brushwork, playing with how perception is affected when the descriptive focus is placed not on human agents but on their surroundings. Figures materialize in recessive space, stripped of physical identifiers. Bodies are described by their painted context, highlighting Hodges’ embrace of tenuous ambiguities and his close observation of the relationship between humans and their surroundings. Their quiet haziness, developed with the soft touch of Hodges’ hand, probes the imprecision of memory and examines the possibility that we are all products of our environment. You can see how he translated his style into a coloring book page in Between the Lines: An RxART Coloring Book by Contemporary Artists – Volume 9.
His work has been presented in solo exhibitions at, among others, Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts (2023), Karma, Los Angeles (2023), the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, Maine (2021–22), Karma, New York (2021), and Dowling Walsh Gallery, Rockland, Maine (2020, 2019). His work is held in the public collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Blanton Museum of Art, Austin; Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; Dallas Museum of Art; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Louis Vuitton Foundation, Paris; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina; Portland Museum of Art, Maine; Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others.