Traveling the Unknown Highway with Rocky Hawkins

In one corner, below Hawkins’ framed degree from the Burnley School of Professional Art in Seattle (now known as the Art Institute), is a smaller easel where he sketches and
paints small-scale works of oil on Masonite boards. Clipped to the easel is a haute couture photo of a model wearing an elaborate feathered hat and dramatic eye make-up, torn from the pages of Vogue. The magazine clipping is a launch pad for the artist’s imagination to leap into a wild portrait from Hawkins’ Many Faces series, but you’d never know the idea came from that clipping once the painting is finished. To be
too realistic in painting would remove the mystery, Hawkins observes.

Lately, Hawkins has embarked on a new path in current paintings for his Unknown Highway series. Moving beyond the well-known themes of portraits, horse and rider, warriors and runners that have been his signature subjects, this series touches on the concept of spiritual journey. Inspired by the independent film Powwow Highway about two Cheyenne men who take a road trip to a powwow out West and their experiences along the way, Hawkins’ new selection of paintings will be exhibited at Visions West in Bozeman, September 12 through October 11.

Operating on a “less is more” premise, the artist uses the highway as a metaphor for life, creating provocative, vivid images that engage wonder in the viewer.

“Right now my search is to get more minimal in my work,” says Hawkins. “I’d like to be able to paint an image in one movement, so that it’s almost childlike, that kind of freedom is the expression of my true self.”

In one image a liquid turquoise swatch of color leads the eye to a pensive Indian face and then on to an allusion of road — deep black asphalt and a yellow dotted line. Is this Indian figure, the viewer wonders, coming or going? Is this his vision, a premonition of the paved roads that would shrink his land? Is it me who is on the road, watching this Indian man as I pass? The painting is open to interpretation, but the viewer has to trust his or her instincts. “Rocky’s work is not hemmed in by one experience, but instead it is threaded with many,” notes Nikki Todd.

Leaving the heaviness of Hawkins’ studio, he steps out into the sunlight and follows the path to the old barn, down the hill, below the house. It’s a cobbled century-old structure, with a stone and rubble foundation. Inside, the high noon sun filters boldly through gaping cracks in the wood. But Rocky speaks reverently of this old building. His expression is alight with the idea of transforming it into a place where he could work. There will be a tall white painter’s wall on the far end, bookshelves over there, storage for canvas and frames down there, a loft above, he says enthusiastically. It is full of possibility, even if that isn’t apparent now. His eyes see something in the angle of the beams, in the gesture of history within this building. Just as he does with his painting, he trusts in its shape and form and believes in what it will become.