Miguel Hoyos is a native of Colombia who followed the horses to Saratoga Springs, NY, and settled there with his wife and two daughters. He loves the Community and finds it inspiring, especially near Saratoga Lake and farming land. He is a genius with color and texture whose fantastical work is both naïf and complex. It features simple, straightforward forms in vivid colors and conveys subtle messages. Many of his subjects present a social commentary; others are pure pleasure or play.
The buoyant and flamboyant paintings belie the artist, Hoyos, who paints for joy and hope. The gift is one he has cultivated since his early youth, when he was influenced by his mother and grandmother, both painters. Sadly, when Hoyos was 18, all of his work was stolen. His discouragement precipitated a hiatus and he put brushes and palette aside. A few decades later, one of his daughters bought him painting lessons with local artist Trudi Smith and he resumed the passion, growing in his appreciation of color and his willingness to explore new themes and techniques. One new development for Hoyos in his second round as a painter is presbyopia. Sometimes he paints wearing his glasses to improve his close-up vision. Then, he changes to glasses that improve his distance vision, giving him two perspectives on the same visual field and underlying his idiosyncratic pointellistic style that maximizes the use of the canvas’s surface and seems to shout, “Touch me!”
The artist explains that he often begins a work with a photograph as a cue, then stretches, builds around it, embellishing and inventing until he senses that the painting is completed. Most of the work portrays the natural world apart from the built environment, plants, animals, and people. Usually, he does not intend the forms to be realistic, but they are recognizable. A horse might be red, a woman’s hair so black it glistens blue, or water might have neon green overtones, but the composition always beckons. He explains a crimson horse “might seem impossible, but when you look into their eyes and see the expression, they will come to life for you”.
Hoyos is a master at juxtaposing his elements to create compelling drama on the canvas. The background is often a solid primary color, but the foreground is a manic profusion of cobalt and violet, scarlet and pink. The color demands attention and distinguishes the work, and complicates it. He also manipulates proportion to make an impression. Nevertheless, Hoyos asserts that paintings is his gate to “peace of mind” because it frees him “to move away from the superficial and practical moments of our way of living and allows for rediscovery in the living subjects and basic elements of life.”
He has two goals. To make people who look at his paintings happy, “because everyone deserves it”. And secondly, to challenge them. If he paints a person who is suffering near a butterfly, it is a sign that “things can change. It is about hope”. A figure with no hands “lacks power”. A fish means prosperity. A dollar bill in the background means “There is money behind it”.
Portraits are another genre entirely for Hoyos, realistic but exaggerated. The portraits may depict starvation, wealth, poverty, danger, or the downtrodden. These spring from his political sensibilities and are not meant to make people happy, but to make them think.
Home is an extension of the studio and Hoyos confesses that every wall in his house is painted a different shade of yellow and hung with his artwork. It make the world “intense” he says; “I am very connected to my work”.