While in college she was introduced to the work of Faber Birren, who invented that dreadful “hospital green” that was supposed to be relaxing, but, instead, was just depressing. However, he also made factories safer using nothing but color, which she thought was so impressive that it became the kernel of her art work.

When as a young artist in Venice, Ca., extension classes were frequently brought to her studio and she experimented with them. She would explain a couple of paintings and then ask them to explain a painting. Usually about half of them understood, which seemed encouraging. Then a reviewer for the LA Times commented on one of her solo shows that the titles actually meant something, so she knew her ideas were working. 

Hobson’s paintings are all about things she has witnessed, people that she knows well, and current events. The lines are like the personae of the work, sort of like a character in a novel. Their configuration began with the lines that direct choreography.   The geometric shapes are events they pass through. A lot of people have trouble understanding abstract art but are comfortable with music, which is equally abstract and which frequently is also telling “stories”, so Hobson suggests they consider abstract works in this mode.