Malibu Studio

Faculty Women's Club Bulletin, UCLA, 1989:

"A visit to the Studio of Inger Hodgson

This place is so remote. Who would live here? I thought as I made the 45 minute scenic drive to Malibu.

The answer came the moment I met the energetic Inger Hodgson, a diminutive dynamo, who welcomed me to her ranch style home and began to show me her work. Her studio, a separate wing of the house, is a document to her artistic ferment. Here a cluster of canvases, there the paper drawings, here the sitting area, over there collages and .., the portraits.

A portrait is a record of certain aspects of a particular human being as seen by another. The sitter may be deified, flattered or even satirized by the painter, but as long as some sense of the sitter's individuality remains the paintin will be a portrait. The artist may be interested in the sitter's physical appearance, social position, soul, or outlook on the world. But the personality of the painter is just as significant as that of the sitter and the relationship between them is perhaps the most relevant of all.

Inger is dedicated to reviving the techniques of the old masters and her portraits emanate quietude and spiritual beauty. As I tried to visualize her moving swiftly to sightsize her portrait sitter's head with measuring thread I felt the fascination of the place.

We are proud to present her work,

Sylvia Raz, FWC Exhibitions Chair."

Inger arrived in Venice, California, in 1966 where she traded her portraits for services. Although Inger was self-taught, her portraits were known for good likeness. In 1976 she moved to Malibu together with her then professor husband and five children. In Malibu Inger was given plenty of exposure and always opportunitites to show, sell and teach. For two decades Inger ran a weekly portrait workshop with model for Malibu Art Association. Inger's studio was built by a carpenter of Swedish descent. Swedes say it reminds them of Carl Larsson. Since Malibu is the kind of movie colony it is, some pupils and some subjects for Inger's paintings have been people whose names are seen on theater marquees all over the world.

In the L.A. area Inger has painted along with and learned from such artists as Francoise Gilot-Salk, Picasso's companion in the 40's, an artist in her own right who later married Jonas Salk and moved to Southern California.

Another teacher and friend is Jan Saether, who together with Liv Saether, ran the Bruchion Academy of Art in L.A. where the styles and tricks of the old masters were taught along with portrait-sculpture. Jan Saether has been the professor of representative art at the Kunst Akademie in Oslo for the last seven years and Liv is a professional artist working in Orange, California.

The nearness to Hollywood afforded Inger the latest expertise in "mask"-making which begun with the need to make a death mask of her son, a need which in turn blossomed into a life-mask making proficiency under the guidance of Michael Lee Walczuk. The "masks," which are not really masks but heads or positives made from negatives taken of people's faces, can be used for teaching just as plaster copies of work by famous sculptors are used at the Cecil school in Florence.