I discovered Hope Gangloff‘s art a few months back and don’t know how I went this long without sharing some of them with you. Based out of New York, she works primarily with pen & ink, drawing images of friends or still lives from photographs she’s taken.

I was a studio art minor in college and went about creating my works of art in a similar fashion. I would use photographs of people that inspired me and then recreated the photographs as I saw them using oil pastels. The most frequent comments I received about my pieces were that I made my subjects appear isolated and alone, uncomfortable in front of the lens. Hope Gangloff’s works have the complete opposite effect for me. To me, her drawings are very encompassing; it’s almost as if we, the viewer, are in the drawing as well and at times it feels almost as if I may know the subjects of her drawings just by the way she portrays them.

I love it when connections like this can be made between a work of art and its viewer. To me there’s nothing like immersing yourself in an Edward Hopper painting only to walk away feeling completely alone and abandoned or meandering through a Monet exhibit feeling as if you could dive right in to one of his water lily paintings. Hope Gangloff’s drawings emanate a similar sense of inclusion – I feel very much a part of her work.