About Bev Hogue and her Beluxe art

The women that Bev Hogue paints have the confidence to disconnect momentarily and the discipline to command the moment. Their daydreams take them to other worlds, but they have their feet on the ground.

Each acrylic canvas meditates on a blue motif, but it's not so much about colour as it is about conviction.

The Canadian artist calls her series "Blue or Nothing"  because it's a line one of her women might deliver in a scene, when someone demands to know why she dresses in blue.

It's also her interpretation of the new luxury. "It's about embracing the odd beauty of the world, rather than trying to escape," Bev Hogue says.

"It's living with a broken heart, not a broken spirit."

Born in Canada's version of the deep south, near the carnival setting of Niagara Falls, Bev Hogue had the privilege of drawing on a wide spectrum of character.

Respect for Salvadore Dali went deep. Her affinity for the Spanish school and the Surrealist phenomenon spoke to her Romanian roots. From these influences, a dark humour emerged.

In a style that drew early praise, she created a world that was not of this world.

Bev Hogue has painted and designed for as long as long as she can remember. Growing up in a rural area (Fenwick, Ont., Canada) she would dream up clothing ideas. "My mother was a seamstress and would  turn my drawings into clothing for my sister and me."  And when she tired of a pair of shoes, she recalls going to the garage and opening up an old can of house paint and giving her shoes a new coat.

After a few years of design school and commercial illustration work, she was inspired to create a series of blue portraits of imaginary women. The work went international in 1999, when a Montreal art patron invited her into a New Millennium volume bound for libraries of The Tate, Uffizi and Sorbonne.  Bev Hogue has exhibited from New York to Chicago, California to Chiang Mai, and her “Blue or Nothing” portraits of women and wildlife are in a number of large private collections.

She now works out of a studio close to where she grew up, in the village of Fonthill in the heart of the Niagara wine belt.

With a strong illustration style and dynamic visual presence, it seems natural that her work would be welcomed into the fashion world. Global fashion force Iron Fist of Los Angeles collaborated with Bev Hogue to create a line of her BELUXE brand clothing and shoes that were featured in Juxtapoz Magazine. Through other partnerships with her Beluxe Inc. company, her art images adorn jewelry, skateboards, device skins and even bowling balls. Bev is particularly proud to be collaborating with Pretty Fierce on a line of yoga gear.

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