Hydeon
Hydeon (Ian Ferguson) is an artist heavily influenced by video game culture, whose dense, chaotic compositions immediately recall Hieronymus Bosch. Like Bosch, his canvases are packed with a hundred micro narratives. They are overwhelming at first glance, defying efforts to take them in all at once. If you choose to engage with the work, your eyes are forced to wander, uncovering one discrete scene after another.
Hydeon - Monolo and Badiolo, 2024
What stands out about Hydeon’s work is an artist far more indebted to Renaissance composition than to any movement from the 19th century onwards. At the same time, he operates under the graphic rules of gaming: employing an isometric, god’s-eye perspective that looks down on the world without a horizon line, vanishing point, or traditional sense of scale and distance.
As a craftsperson, Hydeon shows a sharp command of the brush balanced by a compelling rawness. Again, the rendering of his figures and landscapes brings Bosch to mind. He isn't interested in a Lucian Freud style investigation of painterly space; he is interested in action. His canvases feel like an entire action film condensed into a single plane, as if you stripped every stunt, chase, and fight sequence from a Mad Max movie and flattened them side by side into a single, static moment.
It is a fascinating approach to contemporary painting, and there is very little about his work that doesn't hold my attention.
Cliff’s Current Opinion:
I say this with love and respect. There is too much going on. The colors are good, but not extraordinary. The mark-making is secondary. I wouldn’t purchase one of these paintings because I wouldn’t want it on my wall.
That said… I am in awe of Hydeon because I really get into the little vignettes you find all over. I have spent a lot of time looking at what he is doing.
Note: This needs to be updated. Hydeon’s show at the beginning of 2026 at shows that he is shifting his approach.