
TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK
The She Wolf Amongst Them Fed Undom's Conundrum
2016
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
72 x 108 x 4 1/2 in.
TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK
Coloration Coronation
2016
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
90 x 132 in.
TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK
Wars and Rumors Thereof
2016
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
72 x 72 in.
TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK
Becoming the Toymaker: Phase 13B of 41, or Me Pretending to be Ben Gardner
2017
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
30 x 30 x 5
TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK
Big Tooth Clock
2016
mixed media on canvas
24 x 24 x 1 1/2 in.
TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK
The Grey Remains of a Friendship Scarred
2016
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
30 x 24 x 1 1/2 in.
TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK
8 Back Icon Series: Bringback - Striped Henchman, No. 5102
2016
mixed media on canvas
66 x 38 in.
TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK
Wars and Rumors Thereof, a study
2016
Graphite on paper
24 x 18 in.
TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK
Undom's Conundrum, a study
2016
Graphite and ink on paper
18 x 23 in.
TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK
Head Tread
2015
Acrylic on canvas
10 x 8 in.
TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK
Concerto
2015
Acrylic on canvas
8 x 10 in.
TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK
Letting
2015
Acrylic on canvas
9 x 12 in.
TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK
Without Moving the Apocalypse
2013
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
53 x 36 in.
TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK
The Den
2012
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
84 x 132 x 3 in.
TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK
Quinton Trenton
2012
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
18 x 14 in.
TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK
If You're Too Fat, You Should Buy Clothes That Fit
2012
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
14 x 11 in.
TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK
The Loss of Lies Reossifies the Cross of Eyes
2012
Acrylic and mixed media on canva
18 x 12 in.
TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK
Mold
2010
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
60 x 60 in.
TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK
Fucht Law
2010
Lithography, collage, pigment stained paper, pigmented paper pulp and STPI handmade paper
59 x 66 in.
TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK
Hot Coals in Soul
2010
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
84 x 114 in.
TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK
Aboard
2009
Screen print, collage, stencil shaped paper pulp and STPI handmade paper
59 x 66 1/8 in.
TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK
Blue Bald Voice Effects
2008
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
60 1/2 x 61 x 2 in.
TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK
Vegans and Mounds in the Forest
Production still from Ballet Austin's Cult of Color: Call to Color A collaboration by choreographer and Ballet Austin artistic director Stephen Mills, visual artist Trenton Doyle Hancock and composer Graham Reynolds
Photo: Tony Spielberg
TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK
Moundmeat 3
2002
Acrylic on canvas
10 x 14 in.
TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK
A Yank and a Tug or a Tug and a Yank
2002
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
12 x 9 in.
TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK
The Legend is in Trouble
2001
mixed media on canvas
104 x 120 1/2 in.
For almost two decades, Trenton Doyle Hancock has been constructing his own fantastical narrative that continues to develop and inform his prolific artistic output. Part fictional, part autobiographical, Hancock’s work pulls from his own personal experience, art historical canon, comics and superheroes, pulp fiction, and myriad pop culture references, resulting in a complex amalgamation of characters and plots possessing universal concepts of light and dark, good and evil, and all the grey in between.
Hancock transforms traditionally formal decisions—such as his use of color, language, and pattern—into opportunities to create new characters, develop sub-plots and convey symbolic meaning. Hancock’s works are suffused with personal mythology presented at an operatic scale, often reinterpreting Biblical stories that the artist learned as a child from his family and local church community. His exuberant and subversive narratives employ a variety of cultural tropes, ranging in tone from comic-strip superhero battles to medieval morality plays and influenced in style by Hieronymus Bosch, Max Ernst, Henry Darger, Philip Guston and R. Crumb. Text embedded within the paintings and drawings both drives the narrative and acts as a central visual component. The resulting sprawling installations spill onto beyond the canvas edges and onto gallery walls.
As a whole, Hancock’s highly developed cast of characters acts out a complex mythological battle, creating an elaborate cosmology that embodies his unique aesthetic ideals, musings on color, language, emotions and ultimately, good versus evil. Hancock’s mythology has also been translated through performance, even onto the stage in an original ballet, Cult of Color: Call to Color, commissioned by Ballet Austin, and through site-specific murals for the Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Dallas, TX, and at the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle, WA.
Trenton Doyle Hancock was born in 1974 in Oklahoma City, OK. Raised in Paris, Texas, Hancock earned his BFA from Texas A&M University, Commerce and his MFA from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University, Philadelphia. Hancock was featured in the 2000 and 2002 Whitney Biennial exhibitions, at the time, becoming one of the youngest artists in history to participate in this prestigious survey. In 2014, his exhibition, Skin & Bones: 20 Years of Drawing, at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston traveled to Akron Art Museum, OH; Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; and Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, VA. His work has been the subject of one-person exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, MO; the Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL; the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, FL; the Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah and Atlanta, GA; The Weatherspoon Museum, Greensboro, NC; The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. TX; The Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, FL; Institute for Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA; Olympic Sculpture Park at the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh; and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Hancock’s work is in the permanent collections of several prestigious museums, including the the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; the Studio Museum, New York, NY; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; Dallas Museum of Art, TX; the Menil Collection, Houston, TX; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Modern Art Museum of Forth Worth, TX; Akron Art Museum, OH; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; and il Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea, Trento, Italy. The recipient of numerous awards, Trenton Doyle Hancock lives and works in Houston, TX.