A bold first collection of watercolours on paper and wood by Los Angeles artist Jon Huck (born 1961), At the Drop of a Hat portrays a wild tableau of misfits and weirdos caught in a panoply of odd scenarios and ambivalent moods. There are masks, costumes, recurring props and motifs, and a pervasive fluidity between human and beast. A gleefully deranged comedy animates these bright surfaces – a sense of spontaneous mischief and delight in the brush strokes and blurred paints – but also a longing within the characters themselves, hints of dark melancholy, unsettling private narratives. With a self-taught experimental style both unrestrained and delicately precise, Huck is a nuanced observer of gesture, posture and facial expression, of the personae that conceal us and the flaws that make us real.

128 pages, 19.7 x 26cm, hardcover, The Ice Plant (Los Angeles).