23 Mar 2015

Carlson Hatton at Patrick Painter

Patrick Painter, Inc. is pleased to present a solo exhibition featuring work by Los Angeles artist Carlson Hatton. This exhibition will showcase his large polyptych mixed-media works on paper.

Hatton's work is ambitious in both scale and scope, and his multi-panel tableaus are a feast for the eyes. He discovered complex spatial relationships in the realm of cartoons long before he learned of the studied tenets of cubism. In the worlds of cartoons and illustration, realistic scale is secondary; action is understood in swirling masses with an occasional fist or foot. His interest lies in those visual leaps of faith required to reconcile space that is not easily understood. Hatton's work explores what he calls the symbiotic relation or fusion of environment and figure, the passage of time, and the glow of light suggesting celestial intervention.

He incorporates elements of drawing, painting, and printmaking with washes of watercolor mixed in with masking, stenciling and silk-screening to create complex layers of underlying information. In the quadriptych, Putting Out Fires With Gasoline (2013), detailed renderings are interspersed with boldly colored patterns in green, blue, and pink. Abstract motifs mingle with an identifiable human hand or leg. Each element leads the eye to another so that the viewer cannot rest their gaze on any one area for too long. His work constructs a fantastical reality in which silhouettes and motifs are woven together to defy visual coherence, while still containing vaguely identifiable components.

Based in Los Angeles, this is Carlson Hatton's first exhibition with Patrick Painter, Inc. He received his BFA from the Cooper Union in New York. He also completed post-graduate studies at De Ateliers in Amsterdam, and The Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, The Netherlands. He has exhibited recently at Ruth Bachofner Gallery, Santa Monica, CA and the Torrance Art Museum in Los Angeles, CA. He currently teaches at Santa Monica College.