REGGIE BURROWS HODGES

Recognised for his distinct method of building scenes from a black ground, Hodges’s art has gained international attention for its poignant evocation of personal history and social context. His work is held in major museum collections and has been featured in significant solo and group exhibitions across the United States and Europe.

Early Years

Reggie Burrows Hodges was born in Compton, California, in 1965, and spent his formative years in Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, DC. He studied theatre, film, and African American studies at the University of Kansas, where he also competed as a tennis player. Music has been influential throughout his life; after moving to New York, Hodges performed with the reggae dub band Trumystic and co-founded the group. He started painting consistently after relocating to Maine in 2008 and is now primarily based in the Bay Area, California, and Maine.

Reggie Burrows Hodges Artworks

Hodges’s practice centres on large-scale narrative paintings—often in acrylic and pastel on raw canvas—that navigate themes of belonging, community, and the play of vision and memory. He is particularly recognised for his signature technique: each artwork begins with a layer of black paint on canvas, from which figures and places subtly emerge in foggy, impressionistic brushwork. The focus is placed as much on the environment and atmosphere as on the subject, with forms materialising from negative space and the figure’s identity invoked by context rather than detail

Series and Thematic Development

• Black Ground Technique: Hodges’s use of a black ground is not only visual but conceptual, inviting questions of visibility, erasure, and the legacy of Black life in America. Figures are depicted in athletic events, domestic interiors, and landscapes, each series evoking both personal family recollections and broader social narrative.
• Labor Series and Site-Specific Works: In his Labor series, Hodges foregrounds those who tend the land—from his hometown of Compton to rural California and Maine—in balanced scenes that echo both Impressionism and contemporary social awareness. Works such as Labor: Keepers Orchard (SFMOMA, 2023) depict anonymous figures quietly embedded within vast, shifting environments.
• Travel and European Encounters: During recent travels across Europe, Hodges created the Authorities of Reason series (2025), which responds to canonical art history while reflecting on private and liminal moments in highly historicized environments. These works incorporate references to Western painting, contemporary urban life, and fleeting encounters experienced across cities such as Amsterdam, Berlin, and Venice.

Select Public Commissions, Awards and Accolades

• Bay Area Walls: Incline, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2023), featuring the monumental painting Labor: Keepers Orchard
• Jacob Lawrence Award in Art, American Academy of Arts and Letters (2021)
• Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant (2020)
• Ellis-Beauregard Foundation Fellowship in the Visual Arts (2019)
• Addison Artist Council’s Bartlett H. Hayes, Jr. Prize, Addison Gallery of American Art (2023)

Exhibitions

Reggie Burrows Hodges has been the subject of both solo and group exhibitions at important galleries and in major institutions. Below is a selection of key exhibitions.

• Fresh Paint: Reggie Burrows Hodges, Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY (2025)
• Incline, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA (2023—24)

He has also shown work at the following spaces:

• Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA (2023)
• Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, ME (2021—22)
• Karma Gallery, New York, NY (2021)
• Dowling Walsh Gallery, Rockland, ME (2020, 2019)
• Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
• Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
• Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas

Works by Hodges are held in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), Dallas Museum of Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), and many more.

Reggie Burrows Hodges FAQs

Ocula | 2025