Hugh Atkins  is a visual artist interested in the relationship between “design” and “art” and in the ways that the marginal perspective may lead to insights not afforded by the mainstream. Hugh taught English and drama for over forty years in England and the US before deciding to devote himself full-time to his artistic practice.

Hugh has “always been interested in margins. In the standard interpretation, to be marginalized is to be deprived, but the margins also offer a unique perspective on the mainstream. In this sense, the margins allow access to truths that we cannot see from the center.”  He continues to try to live in the margins, to develop alternative ways of seeing. His present interest in collage focuses on familiar images and ideas that are presented in surprising ways, thus causing the viewer to question the accepted story and to develop a new version. 

Working primarily in collage and incorporating drawing or painting, Atkins’ art involves dismantling images and putting them back together in different forms in order  to discover new perspectives on what seems to be.  His lyrical work with paper, scissors, and tempera yields compositions typically forming mélanges of human forms, landscape, and intricate borders. The work “reinvent[s] the familiar. By taking images that exist in a particular context and then presenting them in ways that subvert those original frames of reference, the works challenge both the viewer’s assumptions about the images themselves and the methods of presentation.”

The antecedents of his  work lie in a lifelong fascination with the multiple perspectives that comprise our notion of reality. His work has been displayed  locally and across our region and continues to maintain his studio practice at The Delaware Contemporary where he regularly exhibits in the Elizabeth Denison Hatch Gallery.