Posted on May 1, 2000

For Walter Hatke, art “is something I always did.”

While growing up in Kansas, he remembers watching his father standing at an easel, making paintings and drawings. By middle school, “I thought I wanted to make art that looked more real and convincing than a photograph, and as real and convincing as life itself.”

At DePauw University, one of Hatke's professors came up with the notion of sending students to New York City to work directly under artists. Hatke went to New York during his sophomore year, and the experience was so wonderful that after he graduated he went back to the city to work in a gallery and develop his own art.

After five years in New York, he and his wife, Ann, were attracted by the romance of a farm, and they bought a small place in northeast Kansas — “a beautiful part of the country that looks a lot like central New York,” he says. There, he began to think about teaching, so, while sending work to New York and painting as much as possible, he earned his M.A. and M.F.A. degrees at the University of Iowa.

After a brief stint at Penn State University, Hatke came to Union in 1986. The liberal arts configuration, he says, is beneficial to everyone. “Teachers learn from students, just as they learn from us. Frankly, it's more exciting and fulfilling to teach undergraduates than graduate students. They're making such remarkable physical, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual changes at this stage of their lives that you feel you can really teach them something fundamental.”

Hatke has a studio on the third floor of his home near the campus. He is a painstaking worker; it's not unusual for a single painting to take as long as four months, and since he may have five or six paintings going at the same time, some of his work can be in the studio a year or two before it's gone.

The comments accompanying the paintings are taken from an interview with Hatke and from an essay written by critic John Arthur. Hatke is represented by MB Modern Gallery, New York City; Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, N.M.; and John Pence Gallery, San Francisco.

“Even though some of America's only remaining virgin forests are in his region of New York State, he leaves such subjects to other painters. There are no primeval woods, rushing streams, or picturesque mountains in his views. Like the backyards and architectural studies, his landscapes have always reflected the presence of man. Further, Hatke's placid views give evidence of symbiotic relationships with nature.”
John Arthur

“I try to be very non-dictatorial as a teacher. I went through different styles, and they were all important to my development. My goal is to make my students draw better and, I hope, understand more about the visual components of the world around them — to open their eyes, make visual associations, think about things. Taking the time to look at things is true of all the arts; you might have to read Faulkner a dozen times to figure out how it went together.”
Walter Hatke

“One element of the interiors provides a major key to Hatke's paintings and graphics, regardless of the subject, and that is the role assigned to ambient light …. Not only does light describe form and define space, more than any other element it is the primary means for instilling and conveying the subtleties of mood.”
John Arthur

“Light is something I've always responded to. I can remember as a child being fascinated by the light coming in the window and reflecting off the dust motes in the air.”
Walter Hatke

“The compression of an extended period of time which characterizes these contemporary plein air painters is readily apparent in the tranquil yard of Hatke's Upstate (1996). Long, late afternoon shadows slip down the white clapboards of an unpretentious farmhouse on a clear serene day. Daylillies and other summer flowers are in bloom in the well-tended garden. However, the trees are caught in their autumned colors of yellow, gold, and red.”
John Arthur

“I really intend for the view to be part of the experience. That's one reason I don't put many people in my paintings. My work is fairly meditative in nature, and people usually meditate alone. As an artist, I don't think you can tell all; it's very important what the viewer brings to the work.”
Walter Hatke

“The quietude of the small town — described through the themes of yard, gardens, rural outbuildings, and architecture — has been a recurrent theme in Hatke's drawings, lithographs, and paintings for more than two decades….Of these emotionally stabilizing subjects, Hatke has written, “Too often in the late twentieth century we race past places, never giving them the viewing and experiencing the deserve….”
John Arthur

“I am always deriving ideas from my experience of directly observing the world around me. I admire the Dutch artists of the seventeenth century, who no doubt were very well acquainted with their surroundings.”
Walter Hatke

“There is an aspect of American landscape painting that diverts all attention away from the artist and directs it toward the subject. Through this enhanced form of representation, our sense of the artist's presence is minimized, and the conviction that we are observing a truthful account of the facts of nature is heightened.”
John Arthur

“My first teaching job was at Penn State, where I found, among other tings, that there wasn't as much light as I was accustomed to. The landscape here in upstate New York is extraordinary. You can travel an hour from the campus in any direction, and it's different. The skies can be magnificent, and I love all the water — and the light on the water. There an be a brightness to this region, and there is also an extraordinary haunting darkness.”
Walter Hatke

To visit Walter Hatke's home page and view some of his paintings, please click here.