Hotels around the country have put off improvements in this weak economy; but in South Jersey, where the tourism industry is the lifeblood, hotels are spending money to renovate and remodel.

With 30 million people living within 300 miles of South Jersey, hotels in Atlantic, Cape May and Ocean counties have spent money keeping up appearances and adding new amenities to attract visitors, many of whom can get here on a tankful of gas.

The work appears to have paid off. 

In Atlantic City, the number of occupied room nights at the Atlantic City casinos has grown from 4.8 million to 5.1 million from 2007 to 2010, show statistics compiled by the Casino Control Commission and the Division of Gaming Enforcement.

In Cape May County, where tourism is a more than $5 billion-a-year industry, work on hotels ranged from major renovation projects, such as the $1.5 million spent at Concord Suites in Avalon, to minor improvements, such as the installation of a new chef’s table counter at the Caribbean Motel in Wildwood.

They are figurative oil paintings whose darkness and drama reminds me of the work of Caravaggio, Jacque-Louis David and even Vancouver painter, Attila Richard Lucas.  Illustrious company, I know, but I can’t help but admire Huctwith’s aspirations to paint contemporary urban angst and sexuality in a classical, romantic style which lends them the fantastical air of mythology and religion.

Huctwith doesn’t squander his influences and gives us a worthy visual puzzle to unfold.  Have the naked “Angels” fallen from the sky only to find themselves marooned here on earth like a Terminator from another age?  Or have they been drugged, raped and molested and then discarded?  One lies in some bramble on a forest floor, another in what seems like a back alley on a big open sheet of cardboard and yet another in someone’s home on the parquet floor.

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