LaToya M. Hobbs is an artist from Little Rock, Arkansas, is a wife and mother of two who presently resides and works in Baltimore, Maryland. The University of Arkansas at Little Rock awarded her a BA in painting, and Purdue University awarded her an MFA in printmaking.
The figurative imagery in LaToya’s work explores concepts of beauty, cultural identity, and womanhood as they apply to women of the African Diaspora. Her printmaking and painting practices are fluidly intertwined, and the result is work that is characterized by texture, color, and striking patterns.
Numerous national and international exhibitions featuring her work have taken place in venues like Namibia’s National Art Gallery in Windhoek. Among these are the Sophia Wananmaker Galleries in San Jose, Costa Rica, the Community Folk Arts Center in Syracuse, NY, the Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, and the Prizm Art Fair in Miami, FL.
Another journal of the W.E.B. Dubois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University, Transition: An International Review, has included LaToya’s work. Her work is held in both private and public collections, including those at the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Getty Research Institute, the National Art Gallery of Namibia, the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, and the Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art.
Her other achievements include winning the 2020 Jane and Walter Sondhiem Artscape Prize, a 2019 Individual Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council, a 2019 Artist Travel Grant from the Municipal Art Society of Baltimore, and a 2020 Artist in Residence award at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans, LA. LaToya is also a founding member of Black Women of Print, a collective whose mission is to make visible the stories and creations of Black women printmakers, both past and present, as well as for the future. She also devotes her time to instructing and inspiring young artists as a Professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art.
