American Pastoral

While her contemporaries were focused on the figure, Shara Hughes uncovered new ground in landscape painting.

- Dodie Kazanjian

Shara Hughes, whose invented landscapes have intoxicated me since I saw one nearly 10 years ago, is at a turning point. At 42, she’s getting married to her longtime partner and fellow artist, Austin Eddy. She is making work for her Los Angeles debut, in September, at the David Kordansky Gallery, and she is on the verge of signing with another, top-tier gallery. Hughes and Eddy recently bought half a townhouse, with a garden, in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn. They’re getting a Boston terrier puppy, tentatively named Puppet, to replace Hughes’s much-loved Chicken Nugget. And she’s thinking hard about saying goodbye to landscape as her main subject.

“There’s a big transition coming,” Hughes tells me. It’s midday and we’re in her Brooklyn studio, which is a seven-minute walk from the townhouse. “I’m not unsure about anything—I feel very good right now.” Although she doesn’t know exactly what her post-landscape work might look like, she’s got lots of ideas. “I’ve been thinking about tapestries or mosaics, doing more public things that take you out of one world and into a different one.” The massive outdoor mural she designed in 2018 across from Boston’s South Station opened her eyes to other possibilities. “I’m thinking outside of the gallery box. I’m not pushing the change, as I think it will come naturally when it’s needed.” The main thing about Hughes’s work is that she doesn’t paint from life, ever. “My works are more about painting than nature,” she has said.