Essays

New Points of Departure

To consistently create good painting, to arrive at new points of departure, a painter must keep re-writing the formal constraints they prescribe themselves. In her most recent exhibition at The Richard Randall Art Studio, Anita Hochman has achieved this. Through using a language of reduction (not formerly evident, or at least of a different nature […]

Flora

Covid has prompted many of us, including artists, to focus attentions close to home – to the places we inhabit. Our urban environments are so heavily modified and designed for human use, we can become blind to the natural world living right alongside us – and on which we are dependent. In these paintings, the […]

Enveloped by the Sky

I remember seeing your beautiful work in Danks Street Sydney and would love to see your next inspiration. I love your work, it makes me feel so calm and serene, you capture the energy in the sky with such softness and fluidity. It resonates with my great experiences traveling the country and being enveloped by […]

Anita Hochman New Paintings

When artists bring their attention to nature, they try and capture those moods that a landscape, seascape or skyscape excites in us. Sometimes they are semiconscious or half-formed feelings. Moonlight reflected in mid-ocean, a sea crashing on a deserted beach, an isolated forest: these can be lonely and spiritual, or thrilling, even heartbreaking, things. Looking […]

Thoughts On My Painting

A note to my brother Mike Hurst every body of work is really a journey. often for me it’s a journey without a clear destination. that makes it a difficult road. but i’ve learnt that my best work leads me. so i need to be there painting every day and each work points on towards […]

Leaving the Ground with New Paintings by Anita Hochman

Anita Hochman’s recent landscapes are delineated by gesture, brushstroke and colour. Many of these abstracted vignettes, in their metallic and iridescent colours, have a mirage-like changeability, the reflection on their surfaces reading differently depending on the position of the viewer, much as a landscape or seascape may change with the day, weather conditions, or even […]

The Theatre of Landscape

Anita Hochman’s Recent Paintings In Tristes Tropiques (1955), Claude Lévi-Strauss talks eloquently about sunset.  As daylight weakens the sun is for him an architect, and then, as the light falls away even more, it becomes a painter.  As night gathers, the imagination is released. Anita Hochman, in her recent paintings has presented us with landscapes built of […]

Opening Address, ‘Landscapes’,

Lismore Regional Art Gallery ‘Landscapes’ charts the inner territory of the emotions – to me these works are both turbulent and serene. There is a notable shift in this series of larger works, a departure from her use of strong colour. The absence of colour in these works – the brooding reduced palette of silver, […]

Unique Abstract Landscapes

‘After a short but inspiring stint in Northern France, far north coast artist Anita Hochman has returned home to show her unique abstract landscapes at an exhibition in Lismore. With the subtlety of her brushstokes Hochman creates land and waterscapes brimming with atmospheric light.’

Awarded Walkom Manning Art Prize ‘Aqua Vitae’, 2003

‘A beautifully controlled monochrome painting that has captured the essence and mood of the ocean’.

The University of Sydney Sesquicentenary Exhibition

‘The paintings dance and shine under the gallery lights … using metallic acrylic paints, she worked the light and darkness of the city into lustrous compositions that capture the watery environment of Sydney’s Woolloomooloo district. This dynamic series of new works advances Anita Hochman’s output to another level. This body of work displays an interest […]

New Space Odyssey

‘Hochman’s vision is more romantic. Poetic. It’s a soulful painting in which the subject is veiled by wet painted vapours’