Resettling in New York

February 1964 - March 1967

Hugh found an apartment at 13 Jones Street in Greenwich Village through his friends Abie and Carla Perez, who rented the building. By early March, he had settled in and had begun to think about painting again. He had acquired a drafting table, a light and brushes and was entertaining his friends. Hugh's renewed interest in painting would very likely have had something to do with a change in his drinking habits.

The work went haltingly at first and after his initial enthusiasm and surfeit of ideas, he stalled. He got down to work, but he was struggling in a way that differed from his former depression-induced self-doubt.

He began with flowers and textiles, paintings that look back to his work of the late 1950s. However, the brushwork and the way he used the white ground of the primed canvas, the sparer arrangement of the flowers and the simpler treatment of the picture space give this work a light jaunty feel that is quite different from the more crowded and intense quality of the earlier work.

Hugh also began to think about figure compositions and by June they were well underway. He was thinking of "the intertwined figures of the sarcophagi of the fun loving (and death-revering) Etruscans that are to be seen in the Metropolitan –and the murals from ruined Pompeii". He may also have been interested in the erotic nature of some of the Pompeii murals as there is a homo-erotic quality to his wrestlers from this period and later. This new approach to the figure marks a major departure from his women with flowers from 1960 to 63. Those figures, however abstracted, were often highly individual, reflecting both a particular and characteristic West Indian body language and attitude (Olympia being an exception). While these new paintings come in part from his days on the beach with his Indian friends, they lack particularity. The formality and stiffness of the figures is very distant from the beach bacchanals he described at that time.

His sister Daphne and brother Rex were trying to arrange exhibitions in Toronto. When these arrangements fell through Daphne had the exhibition at her studio/shop in October. The exhibition was quite successful with quite a few sales, and Hugh was very pleased with the result.

Hugh continued to paint; however he had taken both his subject and colour from magazine photographs rather than painting from memory, which was often his practice (other than for some portraits and the botanicals). While photographic sources are common for many painters, for Hugh it came with a lack of focus and intensity.

At this time, he sold two designs to Wilton Owen at Scalamandre. One of them was an 'animal fantasy' based on some of the cards he produced in Trinidad in December of 1961.

In late November, Hugh announced he was moving to the New York suburb of Queens. Abie and Carla Perez had bought a house there, and he was going to share an apartment in the house with John. The move was to take place in early December, and he was not looking forward to the disruption but was pleased that he would have considerably more and brighter space. The Perez's house would be his home until 1975.

However, by February, he was once again in the doldrums, complaining of lethargy and not painting and drinking more. In the latter part of May, he had an appointment with his doctor because he was experiencing some weakness in his legs. The doctor said Hugh's liver was enlarged and that the oedema and weakness in his legs was due to alcohol and that he must stop drinking. He followed the doctor's orders while questioning the veracity of his conclusions.

He made a brief return to painting in late 1965 or early 1966 and in the summer of 1966, Rex was promoting him to do murals for the Trinidad, Tobago and Grenada pavilion at Expo 67 in Montréal, as well as a design for the curtain for the auditorium.

The project moved slowly, but in late September, he went to Montreal and working with the pavilion's architect finalized the design for the auditorium curtain. The decision about the murals continued to be delayed well into the new year, and the commission was eventually given to another artist.

Photos of Hugh
Hugh at 61 years old
Hugh at 61 years old

Photo from 1964

Hugh
Hugh

Circa 1965