Jim Hatchett
Jim Hatchett’s work has grown from a study of nature, emphasized by his early Desert Altars, and Desert Trail Markers, which were a response to his many extended trips into the spiritual haunts of the mountains, canyons, and deserts of west Texas, primarily in Big Bend. These markers and altars emphasized that relationship one develops when giving in to this world of beauty and challenging terrain. After many years of devotion to this practice Jim needed to express his emotions through paint and the abstract expressionist seemed to be a way for him to respond.
In the last twenty years, Jim has focused on the power of paint and the spontaneity of brush work, color and texture to release the expressiveness in his work.
Abstract Expressionism is characterized by large scale, non representational paintings that emphasize spontaneous gesture, emotional expression, and the physical properties of paint. This movement in American painting had it’s genesis in New York, after World War II. There were many well known painters some who had traveled across the Atlantic to get away from the tragic incidents which were being perpetrated by the Evil axis of Germany, and Italy, in Europe, and Japan in the Pacific.
Painters like Hans Hoffman, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Franz Kline, Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, and Joan Mitchell created some of the most powerful works of the time.
Maybe the political climate in America has given way to a new wave of abstract expressionism, or maybe it’s just a movement that has quietly maintained its steady beat and will always have something to say.
