Imagined Ancestors

Elliott Templeton Fine Arts and John Derian Company present a solo exhibition of paintings by the New York artist Hugo Guinness. Guinness's portraits of "imagined ancestors" emerge from his fascination with the ambiguous truths encoded into one's family history, laden with mystery, secrecy, and potential falsehoods. In this body of work, Guinness envisions family members across an array of historical settings. Considering what bodily features or temperaments might have crossed over, Guinness imbues these characters with overt personality and touches of his present self. Each painting is executed in oil on cardboard, a favored ground for one of his favorite painters, Édouard Vuillard. Rendered in a bright palette and whimsical humor, these pieces, for Guinness, celebrate the statistical miracle that is one's existence. Guinness believes in the dubious relevance of this act (of looking into one's lineage) not only for educational purposes but to invoke the realization that one is, as he describes, "a strange mixture of old and new." Hugo Guinness has worked in New York for over thirty years as a printmaker and painter. His work has been exhibited at the John Derian Company in New York and internationally. Additionally, his work has appeared in publications such as the New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, among others. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, the painter Elliott Puckette, and has two daughters and no pets.