ABOUT ANDRÉE HUDSON

For Andrée Hudson, abstraction in painting isn’t learned, it’s earned.

It’s earned through hard work, laboring over the details of anatomy, the placement of bones, the movements of muscles and other particular details of the form.

While Hudson paints in wildlife, horses, buffalo, cowboys and cowgirls in her signature abstracted style, that wasn’t always the case. Hudson began her art career at the Maryland Institute of Art where she studied illustration and design and her first profession after college was working in medical illustration where she drew anatomical details so precise that physicians used them during surgery.

“I did a lot of textbook illustrations, and anatomical depictions of ultrasounds used for emergencies and surgery,” says Hudson. “I would start with detailed drawings of the human anatomy and then I would go with surgeons into their surgeries and draw examples of the types of pathology they treated. Those illustrations were used in their articles and textbooks. I also did pamphlets for medical offices, covers for science magazines and books, but all very detailed anatomical work.”

However, all this time, Hudson was still working on her fine art, doing portraits of friends and clients in oil to make extra income on the side. But her work in illustration stuck with her and it gave her the understanding she would need to start painting figures and wildlife.

Hudson moved to Colorado in the early 2000s and that’s when she started painting the West; what she saw as the West—horses, cowboys, cowgirls, buffalo, bears, aspens, flyfishing and ranching scenes.

“I took a few of my paintings to Abend Gallery to have them framed,” says Hudson. “Christine, the owner was there and she said who painted these? I told her I did and she said I could show my paintings there. We sold a couple right away.”

Hudson then started showing her work in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She was referred to the Waxlander Gallery on Canyon Road and went in for an interview. During the interview process, a collector came in and asked to purchase one of her paintings. That sealed the deal for the gallery owners and Hudson started a long and fruitful relationship with the gallery.

Hudson takes all of her past experiences, her past education and her knowledge of anatomy into the studio with her every day. It allows her the freedom she needs to approach the figure—be it a person, a horse or a buffalo—and experiment with how she puts the paint down on canvas.

“I just figure it out when I get in there,” says Hudson. I never draw first, I just start painting. My intent is just to make the image more interesting than it is and not make everything as brown as you see with other work. I want to throw out the colors and where they land they land. I’m not strict and don’t follow the rules when it comes to things like warm and cool colors. I just put it out there.”

Her confidence to paint like this comes directly from those early years working as a medical illustrator.

“For me, you have to earn it,” says Hudson. “You have to earn your abstractness. You have to become an amazing draftsman to become abstract. You have to understand where you’re coming from, what your imagery is. For me, I feel like I need to understand the anatomy of something before I can deconstruct it.”

After a very successful twenty-year run working with galleries all across the West, and selling thousands of paintings to collectors, Hudson has recently decided to open a gallery of her own in her hometown of Denver and manage her own career. This has been a dream of Hudson’s since she first started painting and to see it to fruition just this year has reinvigorated her creative impulses.

“New paintings, lots of new paintings,” says Hudson. “Some classic subject matter, some new. Buffalos, horses, cowboys, cowgirls, aspens, longhorns, bears, flyfishing… I’m doing it all.”

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