Monroe Hodder

The Book of Hours

I have become interested in Books of Hours, the most common type of medieval illuminated manuscript containing text, prayers and psalms for worship and daily devotion. Often there was a text for each liturgical hour of the day; hence the name.
There were also supplementary texts such as illustrated liturgical and secular calendars.
I am particularly inspired by Les Tres Riches Heures, made in 1412 to 1416 by the Limbourg Brothers in France for John, Duke of Berry. The beautiful manuscript illustrations for each month were the first record of landscape painting.

I would like to make my own contemporary Book of Hours and am working on a series of twelve paintings, one for each month. Later these paintings will be made into a book also containing text such as prayers. I would like the book to be a spiritual expression.

I feel the nature of my paintings would lend itself to this kind of endeavour.

My paintings are abstract, having slowly emptied of patterns and figures over a period of about twenty years. Departing from the formalism and flatness of modernism, I work through layers in search of a boundless and indeterminate space. The painting, in the end, is devoid of narrative, but reveals the possibilities of metaphor. The viewer becomes the protagonist in a space that is open to suggestion. I imagine my work to be an interactive flow of ideas between art and audience.

I have learned to allow my paintings their own integrity. I rely on process rather than concept and continually seek to expose and explore this process, going through stages of hesitation, and vulnerability, risks and leaps of faith.

The Book of Hours suggests the cycles of life, which is a theme in my work. I paint cross currents of emotion through references to nature: rushing clouds and the swells of the sea, the storms and the calm. The sun and its reflections appear and dissolve, suggesting movements and uncharted passages of time.