Denzil Hurley: Disclosures

During recent visits to his birthplace of Barbados, Seattle-based painter Denzil Hurley started thinking about the history of provisional structures and the ingenuity required to build and mend things with only the available materials on the island.

Hurley’s Glyph paintings grew out of these encounters. Mounted on repurposed sticks and poles of various kinds, he connects and critiques abstraction in painting and sculpture through his consideration of the practical uses of his materials. A term of Greek origin, a glyph is a symbol that conveys a message nonverbally. Most of Hurley’s paintings with this title are densely painted in black—one work frames the blank white wall—making the message of these particular glyphs obscure, pointing to their own form and function.