We recently connected with Carlson Hatton and have shared our conversation below.

Carlson, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

I produced my first large-scale public artwork for Metro Los Angeles along the K Line, which opened to the public in 2021. The Crenshaw and Slauson station consists of 10 murals that each span over 20’ long and range between 4’ and 8’ tall. The artwork took a long time to research and produce and placed me outside of my comfort zone due to the number of murals, the scale, and the fact that the end product would not be fabricated by me but rather an enamel on steel print of my work. This led me to work between traditional and digital techniques and I learned more about color interaction than all my years in art school and studio practice combined. Something about being able to endlessly reverse my last step in Photoshop asked me to consider color interaction in a different manner. During the process of making the work, I had several meetings with community members which required me to explain my approach, and intentions, and to carefully consider the responses of others. This was a really different way of working and at times a humbling exercise that I think every artist should experience. I’m very proud of the finished product and find that I’m still working through combinations of figuration, pattern, and abstraction that the murals explore. I also feel honored to visually contribute to the city that I call home with a work that’s so much about Los Angeles.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’ve been making paintings and drawings for many years and have lived in LA since the early 2000s. I grew up in San Diego in a family that valued the act of making. My parents are ceramics artists and I worked in their studio for their business and learned about the process. From there I moved to New York to attend the Cooper Union and then to the Ateliers, a Post-Graduate program in Amsterdam, where I lived for about 5 years. My road to becoming an artist has included many skill-building jobs along the way, from preparator to window displays, set design, and carpentry/fabrication, to my current role as a professor of art at Santa Monica College. These experiences have been invaluable to my craft and the way that I approach an artwork. I exhibit my work in galleries and occasional public art projects and think my work is most recognizable for my dense descriptions of surrounding environments that have become psychedelic and psychologically charged through the intensity of color, pattern, and a love for finding the abstract within representation and vice-versa. All of my work embraces a collage aesthetic that celebrates layers, a certain confusion of space, and a maximalist approach. I think my work is very true to my experience of living in LA, a very dense and layered city with its pastel colors and high-gloss moments that also offer a great deal of contradiction and depth.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

I process the world and make sense of my surroundings through interpreting it visually. Creating art makes me feel like that cinematic dramatization of a mathematician scribbling across multiple chalkboards trying to resolve some equation. As an art professor, I find the act of showing others how to see to be very influential for my own work. I introduce many students to the challenging and somewhat overwhelming task of capturing a 3D world and placing it on a flat plane. I love this role because it continuously makes me question the act and accuracy of perception. There’s a logic to how we navigate the world and then there’s the visual connections and associations that are just sitting there for all of us to see. Some are functional, like an intersection and a stop sign, and others seem more random, like a tree’s shadow that magically leaves the horizontal and creeps vertically up the side of a building at certain times of the day. I find great reward in the challenge of slowing down, observing these connections, real and imagined, and engaging in the practice of channeling this unlimited language.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I find it part of my job as an artist to continuously pivot. Each new work offers that sensation of starting from scratch. Embarking on a new body of work after putting a show together feels exhilarating and terrifying because of the range of options. I’ve learned to follow the art and my interests, whether or not they initially make sense. Certain projects reveal their logic once you get into the process. I’ve recently returned to my childhood through the world of ceramics, an avenue of art that surrounded me throughout my youth. I’m collaborating on a series of vases combining my parent’s ceramics studio and my interest in vases. The line is called Hatton Vases. The designs of the vases grew from vessel-like forms that surfaced in my paintings and drawings. I fell in love with the shapes and realized they should exist as sculptural and functional objects. Collaborating with my parents has been surprising and very rewarding. The product is much calmer than my 2D work but very related in that they reference cubism, and challenge ideas of balance. The vases can be found at www.hattonvases.com

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.carlsonhatton.com/ and https://hattonvases.com/
• Instagram: @carlsonhatton and @hattonvases