THE PAINTINGS

Consciousness compressed into form

Trenlin Hubbert in her painting studio on Galisteo Street, Santa Fe, 1997, seated in front of large-scale figurative works painted directly on the walls. Photo by Julie Graber.
Studio, Galisteo Street, Santa Fe. 1997. Photo by Julie Graber.

1991-2013

Photo by Julie Graber

For twenty years in Santa Fe, the paintings were what people knew.

Acrylic on paper, canvas, board, plywood, walls (mine and other people’s), and

occasionally paper money.  Any surface that would hold the image.  The work

grew from my study of Egyptian and Mayan symbolic languages.  A cartouche is

not a picture of a name.  It is the name, living in stone.  Figures embedded in

fields of pattern, each constituting the other.

The body as glyph.

ACRYLIC ON PAPER

Request of the Jaguar
Request of the Jaguar
Acrylic on paper by Trenlin Hubbert. A figure stretches diagonally across the composition, nearly airborne, body pale and covered with repeated angular glyphs that also populate the surrounding field. Sweeping bands of teal and gold cut across the surface. A gold hand reaches in from the left edge. Circles and dots form a chain across the figure's torso. The glyph-like marks make no distinction between body and space. The figure is released into the language.
The Release
Medicine for a Priestess
Acrylic on paper by Trenlin Hubbert. A single leg descends from upper right, its foot resting on the edge of a white void. The limb is rendered in warm earth tones against a dominant blue field. An abstract wing form in gold and deep red arcs across the top of the composition. The foot meets the precipice. The wings are already there.
The Edge
Acrylic on paper by Trenlin Hubbert. A single leg descends through a textured blue field, the bare foot pressing into the color below. An abstract wing in pink and gold extends from the upper right. The leg is rendered in warm, mottled tones against layered blues. Companion piece to The Edge.
Of Faith
Acrylic on paper by Trenlin Hubbert, 1996. A large curved form in warm amber and pale gray opens at its center to reveal a luminous interior space. A gold starburst sits at the threshold of the opening. The entire composition is embedded in a dense field of blue and dark teardrop forms. A small animal face peers from the lower right of the amber form. The mountain is patterned with the same marks as the sky around it. Signed and dated.
The Window in the Mountain
Acrylic on paper by Trenlin Hubbert. A figure wearing a striped ceremonial headdress extends one arm outward through a field of gold teardrop forms falling against textured blue. A red sphere rests near the chest. The figure's skin is patterned with the same warm earth tones as the headdress. The arm reaches into open white space edged with gold, as if casting the teardrops into the world.
The Magician No. 1
Acrylic on paper by Trenlin Hubbert. A field of deep red teardrop forms dominates the composition, scattered across pale pink and blue. A figure in the lower right is nearly absorbed into the ground, visible only as a blue face with a single round eye, a red sphere, and a striped headdress at the edge of the frame. The magician is disappearing into what she has made. Companion piece to The Magician 1.
The Magician No.2

That codependency between figure and field became the structural promise of everything that followed.

Acrylic on paper by Trenlin Hubbert. A figure with owl-like eyes and patterned skin grasps a large red form edged with gold leaf fragments. Deep blue teardrop patterning anchors the lower edge. The red shape dominates the composition, its weight held between the figure's arms and the surface itself.
Giving Back to the Gods

ACRYLIC ON BOARD + CANVAS

Dense, richly layered painting of a female figure in profile, her pregnant form rendered in deep earth tones against a swirling blue-green ground. The figure's body is built from overlapping gestural marks that merge with the surrounding field, dissolving the boundary between body and landscape. Organic patterns spiral outward from the torso.
Pregnant Woman 36" x 48" Acrylic on Board
Companion piece depicting a male figure with a swollen abdomen, painted in warm ochres and deep blues. The figure emerges from an intricate ground of interlocking biomorphic forms, the body's contours continuous with the patterned field around it. The composition suggests fertility and transformation without distinguishing between figure and environment.
Pregnant Man 36" x 48" Acrylic on Board
A figure seen from behind, torso twisting, one arm raised, the other reaching. A pale bird at waist height rises behind him. The body is rendered in ghostly lavender-white against fields of blue filled with circular glyph-like forms. Horizontal striped bands cut across the composition. The patterned ground presses in from both sides, encroaching on the figure. Cross-shaped marks appear along the lower edge.
Having Left a Note 34" x 40" Acrylic on Canvas
A human body with a bird head rendered in pale blue-gray bends its head downward, its body curving through a dense field of dark circular forms with luminous centers on a teal ground. The circles penetrate the bird's body — passing through it as much as surrounding it — so the creature appears to be dissolving into or materializing from a cellular matrix. The surface is heavily textured, matte and encrusted.
Death 46 "x 46" Acrylic on Canvas
A reclining nude figure, closely cropped, lying on their side holding a dark blue rectangular form — a book, a tablet, an opening. The body is rendered in muted blue-gray with visible texture across the entire surface. The background is deep red scattered with dark teardrop shapes. The composition is intimate and compressed, the figure filling nearly the entire frame.
The Scout Takes a Little Nap by the Opening 30" x 32" Acrylic on Canvas
Horizontal composition divided between a large face on the right — eyes closed, features rendered in pale lavender-gray — and a circular form on the left containing horizontal bands of green and red-brown with small suspended droplets. The figure's hair is dark, dotted with red-pink circles. The entire surface has a dry, granular texture. The face and the circle exist in parallel, like a dreamer and a vision.
Mary Believes (AKA Pam) 18" x 36" Acrylic on Canvas

I was living in Mexico and couldn’t get my hands on archival paints. What I could get my hands on was a computer, along with forty years of graphic skills I’d kept in a separate drawer from my fine art, as if they belonged to a different person.

My inability to find paint forced down the wall 

segregating my fine art and design practices.

Between 2019 and 2024, I taught myself to make

paintings that moved.

Sacramental Loop – animated painting

Willing – animated painting

The Line No.3 – animated painting

→ MORE ANIMATED PAINTINGS