BIOGRAPHY/STATEMENT

Born in Omaha, NE in 1961, Hron received a B.F.A. from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa (1984), and an M.F.A. from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (1987).   He then received a Graduate Scholarship to study for a year at the State Art Academy in Karlsruhe, Germany.  He then returned to Omaha and established a regular studio and exhibition practice.  He was an adjunct faculty member at several area colleges and received numerous regional awards including three Individual Merit Fellowships from the Nebraska Arts Council.  In 1996 he accepted a faculty position at Bloomsburg University (now Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania). He has exhibited his work nationally in commercial and not-for profit venues and has received numerous awards including three merit awards from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and a Pollock/Krasner Individual Fellowship.  

 

Hron’s large scale oil and acrylic paintings explore the media’s expressive potential through rigorous analysis of common subjects. Borrowing from varied pictorial traditions, he questions aesthetic hierarchies to engage diverse audiences.  Distorted pictorial space animates his images and encourages reflection on the dynamic interrelationship between the personal, the social, and the environmental.    

 

 

LANDSCAPES

These painting owe much to the philosophical notion of the sublime and to various Romantic landscape traditions such as the Hudson River School.  In contemporary context however, the immensity represented by the sky sky reflects more on the need to.

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CLOUDS

These paintings evolved from the landscapes because  I became fascinated with the challenge of depicting a cloud’s endlessly complex self-similar fractal nature representing  the dynamic ungraspable nature of the self. 

 

SCRIBBLES

This work grew from my study of clouds seeking to create the same sort of complexity.  I have made hundreds of these drawings starting each with a line scribbled line as spontaneous as possible followed by a search for compelling shapes.  It is a process of trial and error with each choice impacting the next.  

 

TROMPE-L’OEIL

Trompe-l’oeil, (French: “deceive the eye”) in painting, creation of an optical illusion in which depicted objects appear three dimensional.  In these paintings the trompe l’oeil elements are the elements that project into our space.  These are often symbols for death or decay as in the Vanitas tradition.

 

INTERIORS

The use multiple point perspective in these paintings draws the viewer into the space and suggests movement and maybe the possibility of an animate world. This amplifies the psychological impact of the images.

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STILL LIVES

Daily routines offer an opportunity for regular mindful reflection.  These paintings explore the infinite narrative and visual potential latent in even the most ordinary activity.