Randy Hudson

M any people know Randy Hudson, co-owner of Cisco Brewery, as a man who turns out creations of "the suds" variety, but in his free moments Hudson is a painter considered an emerging talent in Nantucket's art community, who is following a love that he recognized when just a child.

"I don't know why, but streets are just getting me these days," he said on a recent morning in his porch studio off his home's living room. That proximity to the house is why he prefers using water soluble oils because that way the strong fumes of true oil paints and turpentine do not filter inside where his children play and read.

Hudson's latest pieces are of Front Street in 'Sconset, other local streetscapes and a scene in New Orleans where he and his family visited about a year ago. It took him almost a year to finally paint the New Orleans building, because that is how he works.

"I think about what I will paint for months. I'm letting it firm up in my brain [as to] why I want to paint it. I want to paint so many different things about what I see that I can't even start. I don't know why," he said.

PHOTOS BY ROB BENCHLEY Randy Hudson in his studio and a painting of 'Sconset's Front Street. Hudson was sketching, doodling and drawing constantly when he was young. He went on to study landscape architecture at The Design School of North Carolina State University, a subject he considers a cross of artistic and scientific perspectives for the viewer. He was also making sculptures at that time, something he continues to do in a less concrete form by assembling bits of nature together when he is on walks. Those are pieces he leaves in place for whomever else might wander the same path.

After graduation from NCSU, Hudson lived in Chicago for a year where he worked in a natural foods store and created assemblages and collages. Soon after he moved to the island in 1988 he joined the Artists Association and began making small prints that he described as similar to collage using block cuts.

By 1990, Hudson became immersed in all the intricacies of establishing his local brewery and set aside his artistic side to deal with business. When in the fall of 2003 he injured his knees playing soccer and basketball, his wife Wendy Hudson, who had been studying painting with Sherre Wilson Rae at the Artists Association, signed up Randy to study with Katie Trinkle Legge.

"I loved it," he said. "I just jumped right into it with both feet."

His studies with Legge were predominantly still lifes, but in the summer of 2005 he worked with David Lazarus and changed his focus to landscapes.

"When I get out and look around, I see so many beautiful things I want to paint. Why set stuff up? A lot of what interests me in what I'm trying to convey is a connectedness between things — how glass diffuses light and how shadows are cast," he explained, adding that he has little chance to paint plein air, so he uses photos for composition and reference, then works from memory in his studio. Autumn is when Hudson finds the most opportunity to go to his easel.

"The light is stunning and there is a slowdown at the brewery so I have a little bit of time. There is a season for everything, and the season for painting for me is the fall and winter."

In the future, Hudson would like to refine his ability to utilize a plasma cutter so he can craft metal sculptures in a mix of abstract and representational styles.

"I've been thinking for a lot of years of starting to do more sculpture, and I like big scale — and bigger canvases when I get a chance," he said. "There are so many things I'd like to do that I have difficulty narrowing it down to one or two things, but I was interested in sculpture in school and I have some pieces in mind I'd like to do someday.

"I have a way of making a living and I'm doing this as an artistic outlet. I need that outlet to keep me going. It makes me feel that I'm paying attention to parts of me that need to be paid attention to."

Hudson exhibits at South Wharf Gallery, the Artists Association of Nantucket, has paintings displayed at Daily Breads and is beginning to use his brewery as a gallery space. I