Pete Hocking Learning Plan F25 / Draft 10 October 2025

Painting Life / Painting Your Life

Context:

In what media do your work? Why? What do you like about it? What media would you like to try?

I primarily am an oil painter, but sometimes use drawing media and acrylic paint, too. I’m satisfied with the media I’m using, but am considering some experimentation with gouache as a drawing medium.

Oil paint meets my needs because of it’s sensual quality and ability to create luminosity in my landscape painting. I primarily use acrylic when working in portraiture because of it’s great quality as a drawing medium and its speed.

Describe your workspace. What works about it? What does it need?

I have two studios. My primary studio is carved out of my barn, and has a separate storage section. My secondary studio, which I generally use for figure painting is in a bedroom in my house. Both spaces are great to work in.

I generally need more space for the secondary parts of my practice — allowing artworks to dry, storage and framing before shows. I’m also tight on storage space for frames and canvases.

Who sees your work? How do they see it? Who would you like to see your work? Where / how would you like them to see it?

I’m very fortunate to have my work in several galleries and to have multiple shows each year. I also have an active social media following, and periodically get press in regional newspapers and magazines.

In many ways, I’m a regional painter, and I’d like to develop opportunities to show my work beyond Cape Cod. I see this unfolding by developing relationships with galleries in other parts of the country, but also through publications. I’m currently working with a designer on a self-published book.

I’ve aimed my work toward a domestic placement — I want people to live with my paintings. I’m not particularly interested in institutional placement of my work — that is I’m not aiming for museums or other public sites, like hospitals, businesses, or hotels.

What do you love about your paintings? What do you aspire to do with paint?

In general I like what I’m doing with landscape painting, but I also want to expand the subjects in which I’m working. I used to think of myself as a figurative painter, but I’ve lost that dimension in my work. I’d like to work more with the figure again.

Learning Goals:

Goal 1:  Painting About Place

Overview: Over the past decade+, my work has primarily been in the realm of landscape. I’ve worked with architectural motifs early in the period (with occasional architectural painting throughout), and primarily shifted to the open landscapes of the National Seashore in about 2017.

Areas of Learning & Making :

      • Pursue Ongoing Fieldwork into Cape Cod Landscape

          • Walk Daily

          • Photo Documentation

          • Blog (at least) weekly

      • Make Landscape Paintings

          • Move beyond current motif / expand my approach to current motif;

          • Return to townscape

          • Investigate interior spaces as ‘place’

      • Make Haunted Place Series

          • Ghost Houses

          • Haunted Interiors

          • Elegy for place — places I’ve lost

      • Research Landscape Painting / Artists

          • Blog biweekly

      • How do I make my landscape work more ‘queer?’

          • Queer Phenomenology

          • Queer Ecology

          • Blog (at least) biweekly

Resources: (Preliminary)

      • Richard Diebenkorn Catalogue Raisonné

      • Lois Dodd

      • Hurvin Anderson

      • Queer Phenomenology

      • Queer Ecology

      • Batchelor, David. Chromophobia.

      • Gordon, Avery. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination

      • Wesselman, Hank. The Re-Enchantment: A Shamanic Path to a Life of Wonder

      • Landscape Painting Now

      • Morris Kantor Research

      • Celia Paul memoirs

      • Provincetown Painters histories

      • Hukusai’s Landscape

      • Hernan Bas

      • MacFarlane, Robert. The Wild Places
        ·     

Creative Products:

      • Landscape paintings / 100 new paintings

      • Ghost houses / 35 new paintings

      • Fieldwork Blogs / biweekly / 18

      • Blog About Queerness in Art / biweekly / 18

      • Artist Blogs: biweekly / 18

                  • Art process and practice

                  • Place / Artist Dates

                  • Eugene Jansson

                  • Jamie Wyeth

                  • Morris Kantor

                  • Whitman

                  • George Inness

                  • Celia Paul

                  • Jan Muller

                  • Morris Kantor

                  • Brett Charles Seiler

Means of Assessment / Documentation:

          • Keep monthly tally of art production and writing

          • Reflective writing on my blogs

          • Monthly written reflection on my goals in this area that document both accomplishments and gaps; document changes in trajectory of the work. Completed on the 28th of each month.

Timeline:

          • October

              • 10 new landscape paintings

              • 2 fieldwork blogs

              • 2 queerness blogs

              • 2 artist blogs

              • Monthly reflection

          • November

              • 20 new landscape paintings

              • 5 Ghost House paintings

              • 2 fieldwork blogs

              • 2 queerness blogs

              • 2 artist blogs

              • Monthly reflection

          • December

              • 10 new landscape paintings

              • 5 Ghost House paintings

              • 2 fieldwork blogs

              • 2 queerness blogs

              • 2 artist blogs

              • Monthly reflection

          • January

              • 20 new landscape paintings

              • 5 Ghost House paintings

              • 2 fieldwork blogs

              • 2 queerness blogs

              • 2 artist blogs

              • Monthly reflection

          • February

              • 20 new landscape paintings

              • 5 Ghost House paintings

              • 2 fieldwork blogs

              • 2 queerness blogs

              • 2 artist blogs

              • Monthly reflection

          • March

              • 10 new landscape paintings

              • 5 Ghost House paintings

              • 2 fieldwork blogs

              • 2 queerness blogs

              • 2 artist blogs

              • Monthly reflection

          • April

              • 20 new landscape paintings

              • 2 fieldwork blogs

              • 2 queerness blogs

              • 2 artist blogs

              • Monthly reflection

          • May

              • 20 new landscape paintings

              • 2 fieldwork blogs

              • 2 queerness blogs

              • 2 artist blogs

              • Monthly reflection

________________________________________________________

Goal 2: Painting About People

Overview: For a long time I considered myself a figure painter, but have lost that dimension of my work as I’ve build a landscape career. There are stories I want to tell that require the figure, and I’d like to use this workshop to rediscover this part of my practice and to rebuild my skills as a figure painter and portrait painter.

Areas of Learning & Making :

          • Develop a series of 13 self-portraits focused on the shifting nature of self;

          • Develop a series of 6 portraits of friends and family; and research methods and thinking about contemporary portraiture.

          • Make ‘fast and loose’ portraits on paper

          • Make 13 narrative figure paintings that are loose and experimental — using figure, haircut, gesture, and men kissing archives

          • How do I make my work more ‘queer?’

Resources: (Preliminary)

Creative Products:

        • 13 self-portraits;

        • 6 portraits;

        • 13 narrative figure paintings ;

        • series of works on paper;

        • 1 critical essay on the nature of portraiture in contemporary life

        • Blogs

                  • Art process and practice

                  • Place

                  • Eugene Jansson

                  • Jamie Wyeth

                  • Morris Kantor ✔️

                  • Whitman

                  • Charles Brett Seiler

                  • Inness Writing

Means of Assessment / Documentation:

        • I will keep a journal of my self-reflections on self-portraiture

        • I will write a critical essay about portraiture as a discourse and practice.

        • Use the Clarke Lane IG account to catalogue work

        • Keep monthly tally of art production and writing

        • Monthly written reflection on my goals in this area that document both accomplishments and gaps; document changes in trajectory of the work. Completed on the 28th of each month.

Timeline:  I will write about portraiture in the first week of each month; I will develop work each month

          • October

              • Clean out and set up figure studio

              • Monthly reflection

          • November

              • Warm-Up: Begin self-portrait and portrait series

                • Series of self-portrait drawings

                • Series of figure drawings

                • Series portrait drawings

                • Monthly reflection

          • December

              • Self-portraits

                • Start 6 formal self portrait paintings

              • Portraits

                • Start 6 formal portraits / large and small

              • Figurative Paintings

                • Begin ‘fast & loose’ series

              • Monthly reflection

          • January

              • Self-portraits

                • Complete 5 formal self portrait paintings

                • Start 6 new painting

              • Portraits

                • Start 7 formal portraits / large and small

                • Finish portraits

              • Figurative Paintings

                • Continue ‘fast & loose’ series

              • Monthly reflection

          • February

              • Complete works started in earlier months

              • Monthly reflection

          • March

              • Complete works started in earlier months

              • Monthly reflection

          • April

              • Complete works started in earlier months

              • Monthly reflection

          • May

              • Complete works started in earlier months

              • Monthly reflection

________________________________________________________

Goal 3: Advance my Understanding of Memoir

Overview: I have a degree in writing and in completing it developed a memoir manuscript. That project feels incomplete and in need of significant revision. In addition, I’m interested in excising a dimension of that manuscript to develop a new writing project. Finally, I want to explore the relationship between memoir as a literary genre and ‘painting from my life’ within my visual arts practice.

Areas of Learning & Making :

            • Read memoir

            • Read About Memoir

            • Write Memoir

              • Ghost Lives

              • Kurt

              • Fieldguide

            • Consider the relationship between written memoir and my painting practice

Resources: (Preliminary)

            • The Ethics of Life Writing

            • Bechdel, Alison. The Secret to Superhuman Strength

            • Bogart, Anne. What’s The Story: Essays About Artful Theater, and Storytelling

            • Campo, Rafeal. The Poetry of Healing: A Doctor’s Eduction in Empathy, Identity and Desire.

            • Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

            • Guibert, Herve. To The Friend Who Did Not Save My Life

            • Guibert, Herve. The Man in the Red Hat

            • Hocking, Justin. A Fieldguide to the Subterranean

            • Jarman, Derek. At your Own Risk: A Saint’s Testament

            • Mod, Craig. Things Become Other Things: A Walking Memoir

            • Orchant, Rebecca. Simmering: A Kitchen Memoir

            • Paul, Celia. Letters to Gwen John

            • White, Edmund. The Loves of My Life

            • Wilkinson, Alec. Midnights: A Year with the Wellfleet Police

Creative Products:

            • Fragmentary writing working toward a memoir manuscript

            • Memoir chapters

            • Reflective writing about memoir

Means of Assessment:

        • Keep monthly tally of pages and reading

        • Monthly written reflection on my goals in this area that document both accomplishments and gaps; document changes in trajectory of the work. Completed on the 28th of each month.

Timeline:

          • October

              • Write 10 pages of new memoir writing / fragmentary

              • Monthly reflection

          • November

              • Write 20 pages of new memoir writing / fragmentary

              • Read 2 memoirs

              • Monthly reflection

          • December

              • Write 20 pages of new memoir writing / fragmentary

              • Read 2 Memoirs

              • Monthly reflection

          • January

              • Write 20 pages of new memoir writing / fragmentary

              • Read 2 Memoirs

              • Monthly reflection

          • February

              • Write 20 pages of new memoir writing / fragmentary

              • Read 2 Memoirs

              • Begin refining fragmentary writing

              • Monthly reflection

          • March

              • Write 20 pages of new memoir writing / fragmentary

              • Read 2 Memoirs

              • Refine Fragmentary Writing

              • Monthly reflection

          • April

              • Write 20 pages of new memoir writing / fragmentary

              • Read 2 Memoirs

              • Refine Fragmentary Writing

              • Monthly reflection

          • May

              • Write 20 pages of new memoir writing / fragmentary

              • Read 2 Memoirs

              • Refine Fragmentary Writing

              • Monthly reflection