University of Arkansas Visiting Scholar Lecture: Trent Doyle Hancock

Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan, New York.

Image credit: Trenton Doyle Hancock, Hot Coals in Soul, 2010. Acrylic and mixed media on canvas. 84 x 114 in.

The University of Arkansas Department of Art is pleased to announce the Visiting Scholar Lecture by Trent Doyle Hancock. The lecture is made possible by the Joy Pratt Markham Visiting Artist Fund, which supports the department by bringing renowned artists to the University of Arkansas to speak to both students and the community.  The lecture will take place at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 27, in Hillside Auditorium, room 206. The event is free and open to the public.

Raised in Paris, Texas, Trent Doyle Hancock earned his B.F.A. from Texas A&M University-Commerce and his M.F.A. from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University. Equally influenced by both the history of painting and pulp imagery of pop-culture, Hancock transforms traditionally formal decisions—such as the use of color, language and pattern—into opportunities to build narrative, develop sub-plots and convey symbolic meaning. Hancock's works are suffused with personal mythology presented at an operatic scale, often reinterpreting Biblical stories that the artist learned as a child from his family and local church community. His exuberant and subversive narratives employ a variety of cultural tropes, ranging in tone from comic-strip superhero battles to medieval morality plays and influenced in style by Hieronymus Bosch, Max Ernst, Henry Darger, Philip Guston and R. Crumb. His work, often featuring embedded text, utilizes language to help drive the narrative and acts as a central visual component. The result is paintings and drawings that are personal, sophisticated, and captivating.

Hancock was featured in the 2000 and 2002 Whitney Biennial exhibitions, becoming one of the youngest artists in history to participate in this prestigious survey.  His work has been the subject of one-person exhibitions at The Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami; Institute for Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; and many more.

In addition, Hancock's work is found in the permanent collections of museums including the Brooklyn Museum, New York; Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland; Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Wexner Center for the Arts at the Ohio State University, Columbus; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; as well as others.

Hancock has been awarded numerous awards such as a Joan Mitchell Fellowship, Penny McCall Foundation Award, Artadia Foundation Award, and more.

The McIlroy Family Visiting Professorship in Performing and Visual Arts, established in 2005 through the philanthropy of Hayden and Mary Joe McIlroy and the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation, supports the teaching and work of a professional artist who imparts highly specialized knowledge essential to students' artistic, educational, and career enrichment and valuable to the community at large.

All visiting artist and scholar lectures are free and open to the public. The Department of Art, as well as the Joy Pratt Endowment Fund, provide additional support for the Visiting Artist/Scholar Series.