Yumi Hogan’s artistic prowess will be on display for Maryland beachgoers this summer.
A new show opening tonight at the Ocean City Center for the Arts titled “Nature’s Rhythmic Alliance” will feature the Maryland first lady’s abstract landscape paintings. The exhibit is set to run through July and August, the AP reports. The Art League of Ocean City’s website says her work will be shown in the bayside building’s Thaler Gallery.
Here’s a partial description of Hogan’s latest series from the artist herself:
My artwork is my interpretation and abstract vision of the harmony of nature. We human beings are part of nature like cool breezes, trees and flowing water. I feel this existence in the meaning of nature through the freedom of movement and unstructured imagery. All of our lives are connected in this way.
A first-generation Korean immigrant, Yumi Hogan met Maryland’s future Republican governor at an art show in Columbia in 2001 and married him three years later, according to a 2014 story from the Sun. As a professional painter, her work incorporates East Asian painting techniques, is made on traditional Hanji paper with Sumi ink and mixed media, per her official bio.
In addition to supporting her husband in the political realm, Hogan has had chances to use her artist’s eye since moving into the Governor’s Mansion in 2015. When BWI Airport added a whole new concourse late last year, she served as chair of the jury that picked DMV artists’ work to showcase in a new gallery space there. She’s also an adjunct professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art, where she earned her painting degree, and is the honorary chair of the Council for Arts and Culture at the University of Maryland, Baltimore.
The AP reports any proceeds from sales at the Ocean City exhibit will go to art therapy programs for young cancer patients.
