In a letter written in 1876, Gustave Flaubert stated his rule for artists: “Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
These thoughts came to mind during a meeting with Judith Hudson at the Tripoli Gallery in Wainscott, where her solo exhibition, “Eat the Ice Cream Before It Melts,” is on view through July 22.
In her own statement about the show, Ms. Hudson writes, “I know humans have a 100 percent mortality rate. I am in denial. Life is sweet, getting shorter, but I am determined to keep my sense of humor and go down trying. In these paintings, I use skeletons and spilled wine and leftovers and sex to talk about this absurd and precarious position we are all in. Sex is never just about sex. It is about life.”
The show includes mostly watercolors but some oil paintings as well. There are quite a few skeletons, and many of them are sexually engaged with women. Then there are the tabletops, littered with tumbled glasses, wine stains, uneaten food — bacchanalian leftovers.
Lest this sound macabre, that’s far from the whole story. As with much of her other work, the paintings are informed by her astute sense of humor. One composition shows a woman in bed, under the covers with a skeleton, both watching the scene from “A Streetcar Named Desire” in which Stanley opens a bottle of beer on the corner of a table and pours the foam on his head.
Its title is “Just you and me Blanche unless you got someone under the bed,” an allusion to a line from that scene.
Of the series, Ms. Hudson said, “Lately I’m getting old, so I’m thinking about sex and death, and I’m trying to make it humorous. I shouldn’t say death. I should say mortality . . . I’m interested in sex as a metaphor for life, especially in this work. So here I am having sex with skeletons,” though she went on to make it clear it’s not meant to be her. She uses herself as a model “because it’s the easiest person to use.” She said she’d painted abstractly and figuratively for a long time, but was much more focused on abstract work. “Then I had a crisis in my life. I felt like I’ve been such a good girl my whole life, at least in my work I’m going to be a bad girl.”
Enter the “Sex Advice” series from 2008 to 2013. Each work consists of an image and a question, many of them written to Playboy magazine’s adviser. In one she asks, “Ever since my husband started collecting art he spends all his time staring at his Jasper Johns. How do I get his attention?” The image is a woman on all fours with a target painted on her buttocks.
More recently came the clowns. In one, a naked woman and a clown are depicted with the phrase “All we need is dental floss and a feather.” In some, the clowns disport with a playful sexuality, but in others they are rendered poignantly.
“I see them as artists,” Ms. Hudson said. “I didn’t see them as scary clowns, that wasn’t what I was interested in. I also like the gender confusion with clowns, wearing lipstick, costumes, and makeup. I like that whole world.”
She has had a house in Amagansett for 20 years; before that, she lived in East Hampton. She was born in New Jersey, but her family went to Cape Cod in the summers. “I grew up on the water, so I have to be on the water.” She said her life growing up was about the status quo, so “that’s another reason I had to be a bad girl in my work.”
She has a remarkable facility for watercolor. “I love watercolor because it has a kind of airy, impermanent quality that I find beautiful. But I’m looking forward to doing more big oil paintings.”
Having finished such a large series of work over the past 18 months, she said she has “one desire right now: not to work. But it’s not possible. The artist’s life is a working life, it never goes away. Which is the best thing about it.”
