Mary Hatch

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Review/Article

"White Lies" is a painting about elegance and civility, the beautiful social surface of America. It questions the delicate balance between dreams and reality and reminds me of our eternal optimism, the ability to envision our lives as something more than daily existence.

Review/Article:

KALAMAZOO GAZETTE, SUNDAY, JUNE 10, 2001

Mary Hatch: Letting Go in Oils, by Linda S. Mah

Mary Hatch does not see the world in black and white. She sees it in vibrant oranges and greens, stark whites slashed with red, unlikely colors in unlikely combinations.

She knows her paintings don't appeal to everyone because of her sense of color, but there is at least one notable person who was drawn to her work recently-painter Arnold Mesches, who served as the juror for this year's West Michigan Area Show at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts.

Mesches awarded Hatch's oil painting "White Lies" the Grand Prize. It also won the Ward H. and Cora E. Nay Director's Choice Purchase Prize.

"(Mesches) said the most successful work in the show-and her work was the prime example of that-actually set out to do something and achieved that goal," said KIA curator Don Desmett. "She achieved her goals within the work of art in terms of its composition, subject matter, its use of color. Everything was there.

"He definitely talked about it being very resolved, a very finished kind of work."

"White Lies" pictures a couple sitting in chairs, their bodies facing forward but their heads turned toward each other. Although one suspects they are familiar with each other, their body language suggests an emotional distance. The walls behind them are decorated with scenes of palm trees, and an orange glow hovers about the image.

"My sister-in-law sends me postcards from Florida and they always look so perfect, so like Hollywood." Hatch said while visiting the Area Show recently. "Florida represents the best and the worst. It looks like paradise, but the traffic is horrible, it's usually too hot and there's nothing you want to do."

The people in the painting also represent a kind of social perfection, yet there is something unsettling about their relationship. The woman in particular is drawn inward.

"They're very civilized," Hatch said. "To me, they're trying to get along, that's where the title "White Lies" comes from-it's about the polite ways to communicate…It's about the surface of things vs. the reality."

The image is drenches in Hatch's trademark effusive color-this time-orange but she says when she first envisioned the piece it was supposed to be yellow. But her art always surprises her, and eventually orange overtook her and the painting.

"I realized a lot of people don't like my work because they don't like the color," she said. "But for me, I think of color as the really emotional side of the work. I can't do anything until I get the color right."

Hatch was born in Saginaw and grew up in Battle Creek. She earned her bachelors degree in education from Western Michigan University in 1970 and began teaching in Portage Public Schools and in other districts, then returned to WMU for her master's degree in painting in 1972. By 1975, she had become a full time painter.

She'd been teaching during the week and painting on the weekends and found the schedule tiring, yet she couldn't put down her paintbrush.

"I just couldn't not paint," she said. " And it was very frustrating when you're painting part-time and you can't make any progress. You start a piece and by the time you're finished your way beyond where you started (mentally and emotionally)."

The big breakthrough for Hatch came in the late 1970's after several workshops with painter Harvey Breverman at the KIA. She was painting one day when suddenly the work "magically transformed itself into this strange painting."

The secret she thinks was that "I let go of what I started with." Through the years, Hatch tried her hand at things like printmaking, but always she was drawn back to her oil paints.

"I think it's the color and being able to manipulate the paint." She said. "It's very fast. You can keep changing things…. until you get what you want."

Hatch loves the process of painting with oils, the ebb and flow of color and form, the dance that finally is swept away by some internal rhythms coming to their own natural stopping place.

"When painting is finished, it looks like it's always been that way," Hatch said. " You paint until you look and there's nothing wrong with it.

It's about backing off of what you think you want to do and connecting with the point inside of you that does the really creative work."

KALAMAZOO GAZETTE, (REVIEW)SUNDAY, JUNE 10, 2001

Area Show is Surprising and Rewarding, by Amy Sult

…While traditional subjects like figures and nature still predominate, many of the artists included tackle these topics with a penchant for experimenting beyond simple reproduction. Both top awards, in fact, went to the area's most subtly subversive figure painter, Mary Hatch, for her piece "White Lies." The painting features a well-heeled couple seated in two chairs, their deceptive gentility offset by the overwhelmingly orange palette that lends a sense of heightened intensity to the casual glances exchanged by the couple. Subtle interruptions and shifts in the tone and detail of the background create a distinct but aesthetically pleasing line between the couple, like the thin veil of unknowable moments that exist….

KALAMAZOO GAZETTE, FRIDAY, MAY 25 2001

Best of Show: Mary Hatch Wins Top Prizes in Area Show, by William R. Wood

Full-time art student … studied the large, grand prize-winning painting "White Lies" relentlessly…

"I'm not sure why she chose a lot of orange. It strikes me as kind of a rude color; not in a bad way. It's just garish," …

That the artist didn't originally plan to create an orange oil-on-canvas painting is the surprise.

"I don't know how it (the orange) got there. You keep adding colors until it looks right," said the artist Mary Hatch. "When I started the painting I wanted it to be yellow, but it didn't look right."

There were many other surprises Thursday night at the opening of this year's West Michigan Area Show at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, 314 S. Park.

Hatch cleaned up by winning the top two awards, the CSM Grand Prize ($1000) and the Ward H. and Cora E Nay Director's Choice Purchase prize ($1000), both for her painting "White Lies."

The use of orange is intriguing because many people are afraid to paint with strong colors like orange, red and green, said Sherry Emery of Emery Fine arts…