STARS is pleased to present Natural Things, 1996–99, the first exhibition in Los Angeles of work by the Rochester-based artist Cynthia Hawkins. In the late 70s and 80s, as a young artist in New York City, Hawkins exhibited in influential venues including Just Above Midtown, Clocktower, Artists Space, Kenkeleba Gallery, Cinque Gallery, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, where she was an Artist-in-Residence in 1987–88. Since then she has worked as a painter, curator, and academic, having received a doctorate degree in American Studies from the University of Buffalo, SUNY with a dissertation titled, “African American Agency and the Art Object, 1868-1917.” As a painter, Hawkins has spent nearly five decades building a visual vocabulary of abstract forms derived from investigations into scientific, celestial and natural phenomena. Working in loose series, Hawkins is constantly repeating, evolving and adding to her own index of forms, allowing shapes to perform differently each time they are used. In her lyrical compositions, gravitational forces are illustrated through lines, grids, arrows, masses in orbit, and patches of color, with a palette that is both sophisticated and unpredictable, aside from a single series made in the 80s focused on the color green. Natural Things, as the title implies, uses imagery from the natural world such as rock formations and patterns of sunlight through the trees as source material. Far from faithful reproductions, Hawkins intuitively distorts her subjects with energetic layers of color and pattern. As is emblematic of her practice, Natural Things proposes an alternative way of seeing the world around us. Cynthia Hawkins received a BA in Art from CUNY, Queens College, an MFA from Maryland Institute, College of Art, an MA in Museum Studies from Seton Hall University, and earned a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Buffalo, SUNY. Until recently she was gallery director and curator at the Bertha V.B. Lederer Gallery at SUNY Geneseo.