The field of painting has traditionally approached the subject of place by employing representational strategies to depict the visual features of an environment. Daniel Hutchinson proposes something different: artworks that embrace the indeterminacy of a place in flux. Rather than attempting to make fixed historical documents – documentary pictures of an urban environment in stasis – the aim is instead to make paintings that are themselves indeterminate and even volatile. From the actual imprints of matter and real things, the artist composes formal and discursive elements, creating zones of infinite possibility. As surprisingly unfixed pictures, these painting/printmaking hybrids are as unpredictable and irreducible as the features or characteristics that constitute the identity of the place where they’re made.
These works call attention to dialectical relationships between representation and abstraction; process and intention; colour and non-colour; and minimalism and decorative ornamentation. Working with a medium exhausted by its own traditions and expansions, Hutchinson deprives painting of its legible picture, opting for a frottage technique (rubbing and scrapping paint across canvas over textures) and indexing his immediate surroundings for shape, colour and form. The light from studio windows, the topography of studio floorboards, the shape and line of botanical forms found in a nearby conservatory, and even textile patterns sourced from the neighbourhood garment district influence the deployment of abstraction intrinsically linked to the city of Hamilton.
About
Daniel Hutchinson studied painting at Emily Carr and NSCAD University. Notable exhibitions include solo-exhibitions at YYZ Artists' Outlet (Toronto), Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery (Halifax), in the national survey The Painting Project at L'Université du Québec à Montréal, and in More Than Two (Let It Make Itself), at The Power Plant (Toronto). Accolades include the RBC Canadian Painting Competition, the Brucebo Foundation Residency (Sweden) and project grants from the Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Hamilton City Enrichment Fund.
These works call attention to dialectical relationships between representation and abstraction; process and intention; colour and non-colour; and minimalism and decorative ornamentation. Working with a medium exhausted by its own traditions and expansions, Hutchinson deprives painting of its legible picture, opting for a frottage technique (rubbing and scrapping paint across canvas over textures) and indexing his immediate surroundings for shape, colour and form. The light from studio windows, the topography of studio floorboards, the shape and line of botanical forms found in a nearby conservatory, and even textile patterns sourced from the neighbourhood garment district influence the deployment of abstraction intrinsically linked to the city of Hamilton.
About
Daniel Hutchinson studied painting at Emily Carr and NSCAD University. Notable exhibitions include solo-exhibitions at YYZ Artists' Outlet (Toronto), Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery (Halifax), in the national survey The Painting Project at L'Université du Québec à Montréal, and in More Than Two (Let It Make Itself), at The Power Plant (Toronto). Accolades include the RBC Canadian Painting Competition, the Brucebo Foundation Residency (Sweden) and project grants from the Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Hamilton City Enrichment Fund.
The artist gratefully acknowledges the funding support of the City of Hamilton’s City Enrichment Fund.