Julian Hatton

Julian Burroughs Hatton III is an American landscape abstract artist from New York City whose paintings have appeared in galleries in the United States and France. The New York Times described his painting style as "vibrant, playful, semi-abstract landscapes" while New York Sun art critic John Goodrich compared him to French painter Pierre Bonnard. Hatton's abstract landscapes have been compared to paintings by Arthur Dove and Georgia O'Keeffe because of his "unbridled love of pure, hot color" similar to Gaughin and the Fauves, according to critic Ann Landi of ARTnews. Hatton's vision is of "a nature that you can literally eat with your eyes, eye candy transposed onto the entire world," according to critic Joel Silverstein. Hatton lives and works in New York City.

Early years
Hatton was born in Grand Haven, Michigan. The cold Michigan climate with two months of good weather each year, contrasted with the cold flat landscape influenced his sense of color, he recalled later. He graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts in 1974 and from Harvard University in 1979 with a major in art history. Painting in the north of France helped him develop his understanding of color and landscape. His first application to the Studio School in New York was rejected since he lacked a portfolio. He studied with painter Fernando Zobel in Spain, returned with a portfolio, and was accepted. He enrolled at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture from 1980 to 1982. After school, Hatton lived the life of a struggling artist, working at the Water Club restaurant in Manhattan for eight years.

Later he worked with decorative painters, painting interiors of apartments and restaurants, while living in SoHo. In between jobs, Hatton took his portable easel and paint supplies and bicycled to Breezy Point and Prospect Park. Often he would work new painting over old, using parts of the old painting to help solve formal and symbolic problems, while responding to the landscape at hand.

Through trial and error he discovered an innate affinity for bold saturated color as well as a love of abstraction that shadowed naturalism. His work has been called "lyrical." During these years he often worked with fellow artist and wife Alison Berry. His work began to receive recognition, and his paintings started to be shown in art galleries.

Career
Hatton exhibited at Manhattan galleries including Elizabeth Harris Gallery, Kathryn Markel Gallery, Frederieke Taylor Gallery, Frank Mario Gallery, Jon Leon Gallery, Eighth Floor Gallery, Lohin Geduld Gallery and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Invitational Exhibit. He has exhibited his artwork in Washington, Atlanta, San Francisco, Dallas, Charlotte, La Jolla (California) and Southwest Harbor and Belfast (Maine). His work was shown internationally at the Museum at Rochefort-en-Terre in Brittany, France.

ArtInfo described his paintings as "boldly integrating invented and observed shapes and colors" with his "own lexicon of shapes and lines which he arranges in innovative ways" using a "homemade visual syntax" yielding a "feast of contradictions." During these years he taught at the Rhode Island School of Design as well as Swarthmore College and the Vermont Studio Center. His paintings have appeared in the Hijirizaka Collection in Tokyo, the IBJ Schroder Bank & Trust in New York, and at Brook Partners in Dallas. His paintings are in numerous collections, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to the Steve Wynn collection in Las Vegas.

Reactions by critics
New York Times critics have described his painting style as a "layered shapes in saturated colors" which were "vibrant, playful, semi-abstract landscapes" which "layers broad, richly colored shapes of trees, rivers and hills into funky, tautly frontal arcadian visions." Paintings had a "mix of Fauvism, Abstract Expressionism and outsider vision.

Art critic John Goodrich of the New York Sun felt Hatton's paintings were less "real" in terms of factual description but they "contain their own peculiar truths, evident in keenly felt colors and designs." Goodrich felt Hatton "finds expression through his forms." Hatton's paintings "remind us of the potency of a particular modernist aesthetic, and they reward prolonged looking." Goodrich elaborated: The paintings' most intriguing aspect, however, remains their combination of loose allusions and tight rhythms. As with Bonnard, a kind of muscular whimsy prevails.

Critic Ann Landi of ARTnews wrote there was "something endearingly anachronistic about Julian Hatton's abstractions" which had an "unbridled love of pure, hot color," and compared Hatton to Arthur Dove, Georgia O'Keeffe, Paul Gauguin and the Fauvres.

Critic David Ebony in Art in America wrote that Hatton "experiments with complex and sometimes contradictory spatial relationships" and that his landscapes "consist of Cubist-inspired fractured planes and shifting, multiple perspectives." Critic Joel Silverstein in Reviewny.com suggested Hatton's paintings "sing to each other in a high key citron-like color" and compared him to Paul Gauguin, Joan Miro and Ludwig von Hofmann. He described Hatton as a "lyrical designer" who "abstracts form by promoting visual attractiveness."

Awards and grants

 * 1992–MacDowell Residency Fellowship
 * 1993–National Endowment for the Arts, Washington, D.C.
 * 1995–Rochefort-en-Terre, Art Colony Fellowship, Brittany, France
 * 1998–New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Painting
 * 2001–Pollock-Krasner Grant in Painting
 * 2007–Award in Art, American Academy of Arts and Letters