Victor Hughes

artist statement
Victor Hughes is completing his Bachelor of Fine Arts, BFA degrees is (Studio Art 2D) at the University of Missouri St. Louis this Spring 2020. Victor loves to draw black and white drawings of caricatures, portraits and religious themed subject matter. For example, he loves drawing black and white because he thinks this technique is unique and would like to bring it back into the art industry of today. He really like drawing caricatures of people because he have days when he just do not feel he can achieve a good drawing so he find portraits from Pinterest of celebrities and exaggerate their faces to look like what is known to be caricatures. He loves to draw self portraits of his self and celebrities and because he lacks skills in color theory, he has to settle for black and white.

Also, Victor has been known for creating religious themed subject matter. He would like to someday teach people through his art. For example, Jules Cheret, is an artist who thought to use colorful images to create a sort of picture book in his posters for people who could not hardly read or write. His black and white portraiture of Judith beheading Holofernes shows Judith’s prideful reaction after she beheaded Holofernes, his head now on a platter. Another portrait he did was a portrait of an African- American female praying to GOD, she is wearing a dreadlock hairdo and it depicts her hands clasped in prayer.

He creates works of this nature to inform people about what could have taken place years ago. Now through his work, visual exist to support various possibilities and allow individuals to study these proposed events. His influences come from his art teachers at his two-year college and the old masters like Michelangelo and Leonardo Di Vinci. His technique uses drawing pencils of different grades to vary the shading and tones to describe form and negative space. For instance,6B,5B,4B,3B, and 2B that he buys from the local art store like Blicks, Artmart and Hobby Lobby. Hughes also does a variety of caricatures of celebrities and everyday people and just started working if the field as a portraiture and caricature artist, drawing subjects such as Bill Cosby, Barrack Obama and Richard Nixon.

bio
Victor Hughes was born here in St. Louis Mo. He has lived in Saint Louis Mo. all his life, except for some visits to Oklahoma where his grandmother, (his moms mother lived). His profession is as of right now unemployed, but he has had several offers from friends to do art for them, however he turned them down because he did not have his own business. Victor Hughes studied in St. Louis Community College school district. He graduated from Forest Park with an associate degree in general fine arts. He was first introduced to art through family. For instance, his big brother would draw animals and safari women in the jungle. He was self-taught until he started going to schools like Forest Park community college where he has been taught by Mike Paradise and Mike Behle. He started furthering his education at the University of Missouri St. Louis, where he has been taught by Phil Robinson and Mike Behle.

Victor Hughes has been battling the fact that he is red and green color blind and because of this major obstacle, he mostly draws in black and white. Most of all he like to draw themes of the Baptist community religion such as people praying. He gathered that most of the white population were catholic, which is why he portray his subject as African American female in a typical Baptist church praying. Another drawing he did was more of the catholic religion. His drawing represents a woman that goes by the name of Judith, who has already decapitated a man’s head who goes by the name of Holofernes, whose head has been severed by Judith and she placed it on a plate. He captured the look of satisfaction in Judith face after the fact that she has beheaded him. Finally, Victor concluded his religious theme with a drawing about a monk stepping out of the darkness into the light into the gates of heaven. The man is dressed in a brown robe and bare feet as he enters the gates.

He thinks his technique is unique from other artist because most artist use color for expression, but he just feels drawing in black and white works for him and would like to bring it back into the art industry. I would like to bring to the viewer what an illiterate person other wise would not know through reading or writing. For instance, school kids, or those who never went like veterans or dropouts. They can take an image and decipher it for its meaning instead of reading or writing which they might find hard to do. For instance, children books, adults picture books like magazines.