Connecticut artist Sky Hoyt layers acrylics, rice paper, and textiles on her canvases, juxtaposing the diverse surfaces and textures to create a dazzling sensory banquet. Her deft use of color, pattern, and organic shapes take the viewer to a whimsical and joyful place between the real and abstract where they can escape and reflect. Taking inspiration from artists like Henri Matisse, Paul Cézanne, Richard Diebenkorn, and Willem de Kooning, Hoyt departs from mere representation and accurate perspective in her vibrant and flattened compositions.

 

Sky grew up with an interior designer mother in a town with a fine fabric mill, and so was drawn to textiles from a young age. The intuitive harmony with which she arranges patterned textiles on the canvas reveal her life-long familiarity with the medium. Hoyt works with spontaneity, not adhering to her original ideas, but allowing the paintings to show her what they need.

 

Hoyt received her degree from Bennington College in 1990 and has studied at Colorado State University, CO, Grande Chaumière Academy, Paris, Instituto Allende, Mexico, The Art’s League and The National Academy of Design, NY, and The Art Institute of Chicago’s Oxbow School, MI. She has taught at the Mystic Arts Center, Mystic, CT, and at the Norman Rockwell Museum, MA. Hoyt has exhibited her work in solo and group shows in Connecticut, California, New Hampshire, Missouri, Colorado, and Florida.