JIM HATCHETT

Jim Hatchett was born in El Dorado, Arkansas in 1948. After a tour of duty in Vietnam from 1968 to 1969, Hatchett returned to the US and moved to Houston, where he enrolled at the University of Houston in 1971 on the GI Bill and studied with James Surls and John Alexander, making both paintings and large wall relief sculptures. While there, he was among a contingent of sculpture students who erected sculptures around campus to lobby for an expanded sculpture faculty; as a result, Surls was given a full-time position and the internationally-acclaimed artist Salvatore Scarpitta was invited for a year-long teaching residency. In 1982, Hatchett curated a significant exhibition at the Lawndale Annex of works by artists associated with an early alternative art space called the Houston Museum of Modern Art. By the late 1980s, Hatchett had moved to sand, rocks, and dirt on canvas as his favored medium. About twelve years of such productivity was collected in the solo show, A Decade of Dirt, at the Station Museum in 2003. In the years since Hatchett has turned to painting in a colorful abstract expressionist style influenced by the work of Norman Bluhm and Willem de Kooning.

Notes: Pete Gershon interviewed Jim Hatchett at his home/studio on January 7, 2020.