Snowden Hodges’ paintings are as realistic as fine photography. In his still life "Italia," tomatoes shine with a translucence that makes them look fresh enough to eat. His painting "Anteo" — which could be called statu­esque because it looks like a marble statue — portrays two muscular wrestlers straining to their vein-popping limit.

But it’s all abstract art to Hodges, who recently retired from teaching art at Windward Community College.

"In my opinion all art is abstract, no matter how representational or realistic it is," he said. "It’s abstract in that the artist processes the information, and abstraction has to do with picking and choosing what you value, what you want to put in it."

Hodges has put a lot into the art scene. His work has been displayed at galleries from Italy to Japan, he’s won numerous awards and was selected as the artist for a National Geographic Society team studying prehistoric Native American structures in connection with astronomy, but his contributions in the classroom are equally impressive. He taught at WCC for 32 years and helped develop a broad-based curriculum that has sent graduates to major mainland art institutions. In 2002, he established Atelier Hawai‘i at the college, a highly regarded program that trains artists in classical European techniques.

Hodges is being honored as the featured artist in the Honolulu Japanese Chamber of Commerce’s 34th Annual Commitment to Excellence Art Exhibition that opens Tuesday. Several of his works will be on display, including his still lifes and his graceful sketches of the human body. The exhibition also will showcase 80 to 100 works by emerging and invited artists in a juried competition.

Hodges, whose soft-spoken pronunciation of "Baltimur" (Baltimore) attests to his Maryland roots, was trained at the Maryland Institute of Art as a second-generation student of Jacques Maroger, former chief conservator at the Louvre in Paris and a fine painter in the European tradition. Maroger knew how to make paints and pigments that replicate the rich, subtle tones of the Old Masters and trained his students in things like anatomy and sculpture, resulting in drawings and paintings with stunning realism.

"That’s always what art was to me," Hodges said. "It was being able to reproduce what you see, but not just that; you put your own take on it."

The resulting style is now known as contemporary realism, which Hodges said is "becoming more and more popular across the country, with galleries and museums investing in staging contemporary realism (exhibits)."

Hodges has been instrumental in bringing that style to Hawaii. He was a commercial artist "drawing torpedoes for Westinghouse" in Baltimore when he arrived here in 1967 for a yearlong job creating engineering illustrations. He said he "fell in love" with Hawaii and at the same time "realized that commercial art and fine art were way different, and what I really wanted to do was be a painter and do fine art."

He took a few courses at the University of Hawaii, returned to Maryland to finish his training and eventually moved here in 1978. His artistic training, "which was kind of unique in Hawaii," landed him a teaching position at WCC.

His Atelier Hawai‘i program is a six-week concentration in the classical European techniques. Participants ranging from art teachers to beginners paint for three hours a day and attend presentations, learning techniques like "sight-sizing," a centuries-old method in which a measuring tool such as a piece of string is used to draw an object to scale. Just to hear Hodges discuss it is to get a lesson in appreciating the artistic process.

"What it does is teach you to see things objectively," he said. "It sounds kind of strange to say, but you’re teaching yourself to see shapes and values. People think that’s what they see, but you don’t see them well enough to draw them.

"Seeing is largely what the brain does. Your brain gives you a lot of the information, but in order to draw things accurately, you have to be able to reduce something you can put on a canvas or a piece of paper. Knowing about it and recognizing and acknowledging it doesn’t give the information you need to draw it accurately."

Now that he’s retired, Hodges plans to devote his full attention to his own painting. He expects his teaching experience will only enhance his work.

"The reason I began teaching was that I thought it would buy me time to be a painter," he said. "What I hadn’t realized is how much teaching would mean so much to me and how much I’ve learned from the students. I think I’ve gotten back at least as much as I put out as a teacher."