Trenton Doyle Hancock works in a variety of media—including painting, drawing, print, assemblage, sculpture, and literature—to tell a self-generated artistic mythology with characters drawn from serialized superhero stories and biblical allegory. Hancock’s imaginative creatures embody themes of life and death, the struggle between good and evil, love, authority, spirituality, and moral relativism.
In 2008, Hancock translated this ongoing narrative into Cult Of Color: Call To Color, a dance production the artist developed in conjunction with Ballet Austin. FWM collaborated with Hancock to fabricate scenic elements for this show, including one of the main backdrops of an abstracted forest scene. Its appliquéd and hand-sewn surface showcased a vibrant color palette and expressionistic visual energy.
In addition to hybridizing imagery, Hancock is equally adept at wordplay. During his six-year obsession (2006-12) with Spell-Down, an online Yahoo! game, he maintained a journal with detailed game notes, reordering consonants and vowels to construct new words and meanings. Fifty pages of these notes provided the material for an eponymous wallpaper, SPELLDOWN, Hancock created with FWM. This work debuted in Trenton Doyle Hancock: Skin and Bones, 20 Years of Drawing, the 2014 midcareer retrospective organized by the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.
