Mary Hatch

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Review/Article

Review/Article:

THE ANN ARBOR NEWS, (REVIEW) SEPTEMBER 20, 1987

Dreamlike Tension Hides the Intention that Resides in Subdued Narration, at Claire Spitler Gallery, by John Carlos Cantu

There is a remarkable psychological tension sublimated in the paintings of Mary Hatch. A Kalamazoo resident and 1986 recipient of a Creative Artist Grant from the Michigan Council for the Arts, "Dancers and Dreamers," currently on display at the Claire Spitler Gallery, manifests itself in a subdued narrative, revealing itself through the key repetition of a chosen motif. This psychological edge is all the more extraordinary considering the severe representation.

Hatch combines this expressionism with a measured and subtle dose of surrealism while surrendering herself to neither school. Her work, though somewhat mannered, portrays human figures captured in arrested motion-her signature execution.

Hatch's art is both an extension and exploration of well-covered ground in contemporary art. By incorporating and moving beyond this territory, however, her work resides in the penumbra of the psychological shadows she illustrates. It is well between the image and idea underlying her art that the strength of her work reveals itself.

"The Failed Matador," depicts two women facing one another in what seems to reflect a narrative, but the context of the painting is sufficiently ambiguous as to throw this narrative into question.

The woman to the right holds her right hand outward and holds a white handkerchief in her left, thereby mimicking the action of a toreador. The opposite figure has a bramble wrapped around her forehead as she mimics the passing of a bull. Nevertheless, the figures seem oddly detached-neither is directly looking upon another-they seem to stand isolated together in their picture plane.

"Scattered," on the other hand, extends this isolation further while incorporating a series of motifs, which figure prominently in many of the works in this exhibit. Two women wearing white dresses, their faces, necks, and higher torso outside of the picture plane, stand in isolated arrested motion. One figure faces left and holds a yo-yo from her right hand, while the left hand figure stands behind a chair which she props forward. On the foreground various scattered toys: a green airplane, a nondescript house, and two mannequins.

Once again, the narrative is sufficiently ambiguous as to close the viewer from the context of the painting. However, beyond the isolation of the women in the work, there is also the added dismemberment of one of the mannequins. Hatch's homage to Giorgio de Chirico has thus been intermingled with a touch of Hieronymus Bosch. And when this almost subliminal influence of the fantastic is incorporated into the painting's motif, "Scattered" becomes all the more ambiguous in its shadows and motivations.

If the flourishes of Bosch and de Chirico seem to inhabit Hatch's "Scattered," "Phantoms" seems to owe a debt to no one but Hatch alone. A relatively simple work of enormous impact-a young woman wearing a white summer dress sits in a chair facing the viewer. To the forefront of the painting, ethereal flamingos walk before her.

Whatever the intended psychological meaning of this work, it is isolated in the canvas. The contrast between the fully painted woman and the birds with the grey shadows of the room's bare walls is strong enough in its own right to create an emotional juxtaposition which seems to be finely balanced between the imagery and the idea of the painting. Once again, Hatch's iconography is sufficiently dense to prohibit a total reading.

The work of Mary Hatch does not reveal itself readily to superficial investigation, but for the interested viewer willing to invest a little time to the study of her iconography as it moves from painting to painting her paintings are fascinating studies, which seem to reveal themselves pictorially even as they hide their intentions psychologically. And that is what dreams are about.