Shara Hughes Is Painting Her Post-Election Rage

Artists have a unique way of tapping into the zeitgeist and getting right to the heart of the matter. Ever since the 270th electoral vote on election night declared Donald Trump the winner, people have found their own ways of dealing with the results. One friend, a novelist, told me her first instinct was to go back to smoking. “And I haven’t had a cigarette since 1968.” Another, a professor, has installed a dart board in her office and imagines Donald Trump at the center. “I hit the target every time,” she gloats. And a pioneering female gallerist who had stopped watching MSNBC during the election season, went back to it right after the election, “Because it’s like being with old friends—they’re so biased in the right way!”

Recently, I asked the artist Shara Hughes what she was working on in her studio. Without hesitation, she shot back, “Rage!” Three large paintings were already finished and she had just started a fourth that morning. Phrases like “don’t be ugly,” “be the bigger person,” and “don’t rock the boat” accompanied by wordless rage keep going through her head, over and over, as she paints them fast and furiously. “It’s the words and the rage that are motivating me this week,” she says.