Artospective: Paintings by Scott Hutchison.

Her Echo - Her Shadow.

An Interview with Scott Hutchison.

Who and from where are you from?

My name is Scott Hutchison. I am a painting and drawing professor at Georgetown University in Washington DC. I have been painting professionally for over 20 years and currently paint out of my home studio in Arlington Virginia. (A few photos attached)

How you got into this?

My work has evolved a lot over the years. My current body of paintings are a culmination of years of creating. Essentially, one pieces leads to another, and so on, so it's difficult to fully describe how I came to do what I do now. However, I will say that the model is my main source of inspiration. I work from a model's pose and begin expanding or subtracting from there. Think of the model a song's melody. I try to compose around that melody; manipulating it, repeating it and changing its tone and colors. The pose I choose is wholly based on my gut instinct. I look for that initial personality or inner life within the pose or gaze.

What is your driving force?

My paintings and drawings are comprised of overlapping figures stitched together in one composition. They are multifaceted, abstracted, and meant to evoke the idea that our identity is in flux. Though we are singular beings, our psyche is not. We are molded in part by time and our life experiences.

The subjects in my paintings personify the strength and frailty of consciousness and the depths to which we experience the human condition. The figures are displaced, out of sync and created from a multitude of people, like ghosts or layered memories, both timeless and self-aware.

All of my work can be seen as a journal entry, the manifestation of a deep concern for place and purpose in this world. I reassign faces and body parts through a mixture of trial and error, coupled with random chance and the need to create something from nothing. During this process, I am fully aware that I am seeking answers to a larger question: Who or what defines us as an individual? Are we here by accident, or is there an invisible hand at play? Why are we here? Is there a purpose, or are we just a product of our culture and our experiences? My art is meant to tug at the viewer and suggest that there is more to the material world.

What kind of work you do and why?

As I mentioned before, my painting style has evolved a great deal over my career. I am particularly proud of the fact that my work has changed and my styles altered to reflect my personal and artistic concerns.Timeline The techniques I use today best reflect what I am trying to say about the ideas of self. The real vs the unreal, or the physical vs the psychological. For example, the dark backgrounds isolate the figure and allow me to create a greater amount of illusory realistic depth. However, I also use synthetic colors to evoke a psychological conflict within the work.

So what are your future plans?

I am currently doing small to mid-sized portraits focused pieces, but I see myself moving toward larger multi-figurative paintings in the near future. I would also like to expand my subject matter by incorporating the background and possibly changing the shape of my canvases to enhance the broken and reassembled themes within the picture plane. I have no gallery openings currently planned, but I am excited to be showing my work at a new contemporary art fair called Superfine DC early November 2018.