Peter Hoffer: Tree Portraits (CYG, 2025)

By Anna Friedrich

The most striking element of Peter Hoffer’s tree portraits—for they are all portraits, individual and unique—is their epoxied surface. Glossy, bubbly, highly reflective, is it supposed to help us focus on the image or distract from it? Should it be viewed as organic part of the portrait or as a foreign element we must try to ignore? To see the image clearly, one must find an angle, wait for the sun to disappear, rig some artificial lighting. But, perhaps, the point here is not to see it clearly. Perhaps, rather than try to hide the painting in a shadowed corner, we should let the sun splotches permeate the tree contours and allow the fixed silhouette to transform into a series of moving pictures, tableaux vivants.

The playful interaction of the reflected light and semi-visible landscape is the beating heart of Peter Hoffer’s art. To expose it, the viewer needs to position the painting boldly in front of a source of light. Light will turn the artwork’s surface into a mirror in which anything can reflect: a beloved face, a household pet, a view from outside the window, another painting on the opposite wall. A portrait of a single tree thus becomes an extrapolation of memories, each as real and as fleeting as the next. Toward evening, though, when the play of light recedes, we are left one on one with a lone sapling and a vast, uninhabited landscape designed to accommodate as many reflections and sun splashes as its size permits.

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All this—the trees, the surface, the colors—is the result of thirty-plus years of searching and experimenting, of perfecting the original concept. Trees as unforgettable as faces, as mementos of distant travels, as one’s companions in a décor have been emerging on boxy wood panels in Hoffer’s atelier for decades, always changing, passing from phase to phase. Originally inspired by the practice of the 19th-century French salon participants who revarnished their submissions between showings to restore freshness, Hoffer had first worked with oil paints and layers of damar varnish which took weeks to cure. He later exchanged varnish for commercial epoxy resins, when they became available, and oil paints for acrylics, as they interacted better with water-based epoxies and crated a stabler surface. Now, the drying took only a few days, and the look of the paintings gradually changed. Twilight shadows and subtle sunset hues blossomed into a cornucopia of color, as witnessed in Chase Young gallery’s 2025 show Arboretum. Here, single young trees positioned in the center of abstract landscape offer vivid pinks and whites in the bright morning sun, contrasting, according to Hoffer, “a sense of fragility with strength.”

All compositions are grounded with a clear horizon line, and we continue to see exposed wood and occasional paint dripping. In the recent works these practices contribute to the stylized, ironic effect, whereas before, they used to imitate a quick study au plenaire. Interestingly, the energetic diagonal scratches on the small, exquisite Arbres portraits from 2025 that suggest heavy rain, do not disturb the smooth epoxied surface or the trees themselves. Hoffer, who habitually imitates different techniques, says that the scratches only imitate palette knife, which he doesn’t use. Under the glossy finish, these feigned scratches, reminiscent of Van Gogh’s rain-lashed fields, read as a cheerful postmodern hello to the Impressionism.

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Subjects for Hoffer’s tree portraits come from many sources. “More often than not,” says Hoffer, “I will take photos from various locations in the countryside, in Canada and Europe. The blossom foliage is mostly from the West Coast in early spring and the East Coast in late spring. I will also borrow images of trees from various historic artworks.” We recognize young oaks and maples, a gorgeous linden in early fall, every kind of pine tree. They have been shown across the US, all over Canada and Europe, in Hong Kong and Singapore. In the last three years the size of the paintings has increased, which accounts for less frequent shows. It now takes Hoffer several weeks to complete a painting, so the work takes place primarily in his Montréal studio in a controlled environment. But much of the process also happens in his beloved cabin in the Laurentian Mountains of Quebec. In fact, some of the most haunting, dreamlike images, like Laurentide from 2022, were drawn there.

Since he began to show his art at Chase Young Gallery in 2006, it has evolved from realistic muted landscapes to the current vibrant, impressionistic portraits. He doesn’t, however, “set out with one style in mind,” but rather lets “the passing moment determine in which direction the painting will go.” Thus, the same tree can be captured in different manners, and this anticipation of the next coil of Hoffer’s evolution—how many ways are there to show a tree?—keeps the viewers on their heels, as they expect a new duet of medium and subject, a new unexplored rendition of the familiar silhouette.

EDUCATION

1990: A.O.C.A. Hon’s, Ontario College of Art – Toronto, Ontario

1993: B.F.A. Fine Arts, University of Guelph – Guelph, Ontario

1996: M.F.A. Concordia University – Montréal, Quebec

RECENT EXHIBITIONS

2025

Chase Young Gallery, Boston

2022

Battersea Spring

AAF New York Spring

Art Market San Francisco

AAF Hampstead

AAF Singapore

2021

AFF Brussels

Battersea Fall2020

Group show K+Y Gallery, Paris

2019

AAF Singapore

AAF London

AAF New York

2018

AAF Hong Kong

AAF London Hampstead

AAF Brussels

AAF Battersea Spring

2017

Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, NYC

Galerie de Bellefeuille, Montréal, QC

2016

Art Hamptons

AAF New York

AAF Hong Kong

Envie d’Art Gallery, Paris

Chase Young Gallery, Boston

Galleri Maerz Contemporary, Berlin