(born 1959) London artist Vincent Hawkins is featured in Flying Suit with a cache of new works on paper; this is his first solo exhibition in Chicago. Persuading paper, pigment and gesture to perform risky formal maneuvers, his modestly scaled masculine “poems” are nothing short of masterful. In a recent interview, Hawkins said “I paint and draw with acrylic on canvas, cardboard and paper, and recently have begun making 3 dimensional pieces. I work in an improvisational way, never knowing from the outset how anything will turn out. At the moment I am pursuing a line of enquiry that goes against how I have set about working before. A little dissatisfied with way the canvas “frames” or “windows”, I am becoming more interested in the forms I produce as objects in their own right, bringing them into the immediate environment. It may be more a sculptor’s sensibility but I still see it as painting.”

Vincent Hawkins is involved with painting and drawing; he received a BA in painting from Maidstone College of Art in Kent in England. Recent exhibitions include Inshore Fishing, an exhibition dedicated to and including work by the St Ives painter Peter Lanyon at The Rokeby Gallery in London; Theatrical Dynamics at The Torrence Art Museum, CA, curated by David Leapman; finalist in John Moores Painting Prize 2012 as well as winning a prize in the same event in 2006; Layer Cake, Fabio Tiboni in Bologna; Abstrunkt at Winona State University; The Chameleon’s Eye at Centrum, Berlin; ATN Bushwick Open Studios Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY; Moveable Feast, Paris, curated by Erin Lawlor; Five Galerie 1/5, Toulon, curated by Yifat Gat; A Sort Of Night Of The Mind, Herbert Reed Gallery; and Artary Gallery, Stuttgart. In 2008, he showed with Tracey Emin’s Curated Room at The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. He also showed work in Invisible Cities at The Jerwood Space London and was a finalist in the Jerwood Painting Prize in 2006.