I'm Tired, Harbor Me

Frothing waves of iridescent blue rush over the sides of a huge wooden boat in Shara Hughes’ roiling shipwreck I’m Tired, Harbor Me, 2009. At the centre of this large painting, the vessel keels and strains at its mooring, with other ships tossed like toys in the tempestuous sea. Prismatic cascades shoot over the part-smashed deck as cresting aquamarines and shadowy greens flood the scene. Hughes’ colours are potent, electric, and seductive, recalling the expressive palettes of Henri Matisse and Gustave Klimt. Yet Hughes rarely mixes individual tonalities, preferring instead to paint directly from the tube as she wields her pigments like a structural force. Indeed, making paintings that the viewer can ‘really travel through’ is important to Hughes who uses colour, orientation, and perspective to open her canvases up to illusionistic depth (S. Hughes, quoted in ‘Shara Hughes with Alex A. Jones’, Brooklyn Rail, June 2019).

Hughes rose to prominence for her depictions of interiors. Defying conventional techniques of representation, these are vibrant and imaginary settings which pulse with clashing colours and patterns. Although ostensibly rooms, Hughes’ interiors offered her a language to explore all elements of life. As she explained, ‘Within an interior, you can make a landscape through a window or you can make another person’s painting within the painting, or you can paint figures or not’ (S. Hughes, quoted in ‘Shara Hughes by Rachel Reese’, Bomb, 9 April 2013). Indeed, Hughes’ interiors are always more than simply representations of the domestic; in fact, they are often not recognisable rooms at all. By embracing such an expansive definition, Hughes uses this framing to interrogate the tensions between interior and exterior, figuration and abstraction, real and pretend. In I’m Tired, Harbor Me the rising waves threaten to upset the boat’s shelter; these are glorious, formidable waters whose warnings must be heeded.