Featured Artist Judy Hatlen

Artist Judy Hatlen presents a delightful portfolio of paintings inspired by the natural world. Enjoy her portfolio and find more on her website.

 

 

I’ve loved to draw since I was three years old, when my mother showed me how to draw stick people. I started figuring out how to draw the people in varied positions, add facial expressions, and draw clothing.

 

 

Drawing two or more figures interacting or one engaged in an activity became a way to tell stories. It was a constant obsession, and my parents would often comment that I was going to grow up to be an artist. Throughout my school years, I was encouraged by my art teachers, and chastised for drawing instead of listening in class by my social studies teachers.

 

 

In high school, my art took a surrealist turn. It became a way to express my feelings and understanding of the world. I was mainly a surrealist artist all through college and into my adulthood. When I was in my 30s, someone commissioned me to paint a scene he remembered from his childhood.

 

 

It was a team of horses hitched to a tobacco wagon, with the farmer and his wife having a lunch break on a spread-out blanket nearby. Painting that scene connected me to my farm girl roots. It gave me such a peaceful feeling that I became hooked on depicting scenes of rural life, especially during the early 20th century.

 

 

I’ve always loved the outdoors. My grandmother ignited my fascination with wildflowers when she bought me a little “guide to wildflowers” and took me flower hunting on our family farm one spring. Eventually that fascination found its way into my art.

 

 

I took some inspiration from the larger than life flower paintings of Georgia O’Keefe. Zeroing in on a single blossom or group of blossoms, I seek to bring out all the details that would be missed with a hurried glance. Painting these flowers in their natural environment, often with a visiting pollinator, I seek to raise awareness of the fragile life forms that humans must work to preserve. I also encourage the viewer to stop and observe deeply, and in doing so, to find renewal.

 

 

I work in three main mediums: acrylic on canvas, graphite pencil, and digital art. Digital paintings, using the brush tools in an imaging program, require as much skill as acrylic on canvas, but have their own set of challenges. When I want to sell my work as prints, digital painting eliminates the step of having my work photographed, which is an advantage.

 

 

My pencil drawings emphasize detail, value, and texture. Years ago, I started scanning my drawings and digitally combining them with color photographs of sunsets or sunrises. The effect is striking.

 

 

Whether in a residential or more public setting, my main goal for my art is summed up in this sentence: “It’s important to have a peaceful haven where you can renew your energy and nourish your spirit. My artwork is meant to help to create that.”

 

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