Three Sentinels

Judy Hodge is an American painter based in Buffalo, New York, whose work centers on expressive interpretations of landscape and the natural environment. She studied fine art at the University at Buffalo, earning a BFA in painting with a minor in art history and later completing interdisciplinary graduate study in fine art and computer science. During her education, she studied with artists including Walter Prochownik, Seymour Drumlevitch, Tony Conrad, and Sheldon Berlyn, developing within an environment strongly influenced by Abstract Expressionism, experimentation, and the expressive possibilities of color and movement.

After graduate school, Hodge spent roughly two decades working in advertising and creative direction in cities including Orlando, Scottsdale, Boston, and Buffalo before returning seriously to painting in 2013. Her early studio work leaned toward large-scale abstraction, but landscape gradually became the central focus of her practice. Among her most important influences are Vincent van Gogh, Tom Thomson, and the Canadian Group of Seven, whose approaches to color, structure, and the emotional force of nature helped shape her own visual language. Working primarily in acrylic and oil, with additional work in pastel and mixed-media watercolor, Hodge uses broad color relationships and active surfaces to convey the movement and physical energy she sees within otherwise still landscapes.

Hodge has exhibited extensively throughout Western New York and beyond in solo, juried, and group exhibitions. Her career includes a forty-painting solo exhibition at the Hoyt Art Center, exhibitions with the Carnegie Art Center, Schweinfurth Art Center, Buffalo Art Movement, and Burchfield Penney Art Center, and numerous regional and national juried shows. She has twice received the Buffalo Society of Artists Gold Award, in 2017 and 2021, and her work entered the permanent collection of the Burchfield Penney Art Center in 2023. Her paintings and public installations can also be found in institutional, corporate, and private collections, including Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center and Renown Health in Nevada.

Across her work, Hodge approaches landscape as more than a record of scenery. Her paintings are driven by the physical and emotional force of nature, using color, gesture, and movement to suggest the constant change beneath a seemingly static view. That combination of regional landscape, expressive painting, and environmental awareness has become the defining thread of her contemporary practice.