Walter Hatke is a painter whose work has been professionally shown and collected since he was in high school. From 1975 he has been represented by art galleries in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Santa Fe, and currently through Gallery Henoch in New York. Hatke’s work is in public, private, and corporate collections throughout the U.S. and abroad, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Academy Museum (NYC), The Art Institute of Chicago, Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art, Smith College Museum of Art, Tucson Museum of Art, Sheldon Museum of Art (University of Nebraska), Kansai Gaidai University (Japan), Nanjing University (China), JP Morgan Chase, Hallmark, and The Boston Company.
He has received awards and honors from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Ingram Merrill Foundation, and has participated in the U.S. State Department’s Art in Embassies Program for nine years.
For 30 years, he taught painting, drawing and biological illustration at Union College, where he was the Walter C. & May I. Baker Professor of Visual Arts. Over the years he has served as visiting artist, critic, and lecturer at Dartmouth College, the Kansas City Art Institute, and Yale University.
He and his wife Ann continue to live in Schenectady, New York. Hatke’s work has been greatly influenced by literature, philosophy, and religion, as well as through collaborations with poet Jordan Smith.