Upon stepping into Charles Moffett gallery, we were greeted not only by paintings but also by the atmosphere of an accelerated American journey. Painter Keiran Brennan Hinton’s “Change of Scenery” exhibition, which at first glance appears serene but is actually the product of an intense observation practice, places a geographic trilogy under the lens, stretching from Texas’s scorched plains to Fishers Island’s bright sea.
Hinton invites the viewer directly into his experiential lens in this exhibition. The artist, while painting and reading canonical American texts like Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, has sought to capture not only the landscapes but also the literary spirit embedded in those landscapes.
The most striking aspect of the exhibition is seeing how the mood of the three geographies changes with the painting technique:
Texas’s Silence (Corsicana): In the Texas paintings, the sharpness of the light and the unending flatness of the terrain are immediately felt. The artist has used the windows of his temporary studio as a threshold between the quiet inner world and the vastness outside. By focusing on moments that slow down time, such as dawn and dusk, it’s as if McMurtry’s epic narrative is hidden in the details of daily life. The half glass of coffee on the coffee table, as proof of a life, accompanies that endless horizon line.
Martha’s Vineyard’s Fluidity: In contrast to Texas, there is no moment of stillness in Martha’s Vineyard. The ocean winds and constantly breaking waves have forced Hinton to apply paint wet-on-wet and to work quickly in an effort to “remember the feel of a day.” These works echo the theme of pursuing the impossible in Melville’s Moby Dick.
Fishers Island’s Intimacy: The exhibition’s climax shifts to a more personal realm with invitations to the homes of families living on the island. In works like Oyster Farm Family Tree, the artist now paints not only the outer landscape but also a family tree on a wall or a half-finished glass, capturing the intimate evidence of lives lived within those home walls.
The Horizon Line: An Unattainable Promise
For Hinton, the horizon line has been the constant companion of all these journeys. It is a fiction created by the human eye, unattainable. Yet the artist succeeds in capturing that horizon with his paintings; he fixes it on the canvas and reminds the viewer “not what it looked like, but how it felt.” This exhibition was a lyrical and thought-provoking experience that invites us to gaze at that horizon line and question the distances within ourselves.
Exhibition Information:
- Artist: Keiran Brennan Hinton
- Title: Change of Scenery
- Venue: Charles Moffett, NYC
- Dates: Continues until November 22, 2025
