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I lived in Florida until 2010, where I played outside on the unpaved roads and in the woods, learning how to catch lizards and bugs. The paintings on the walls in the house there must be lodged in my brain for good: a close-cropped watercolor of a flowering palm, a painting of great blue herons, and other pieces that took local scenes and wildlife for their subject. This sense of connection with the environment never left me, even as I moved to Brooklyn, NY for school. Here, the air feels pressurized with everyone’s activity and you get the sense that if you’re not doing something at every moment then you’re wasting time, so I've tried to bring that swiftness into the work. At first the imagery of city infrastructure found its way into my work because it was so new to me, having never lived in a big city before. The bridges, the waterfronts like East River Park, and the birds in Prospect Park have been and still are fruitful places to find forms and ideas. My favorite places tend to be peripheral to the main activity of the neighborhoods where the presence of the elements outside the human-made structures start to creep in.
Recently I've taken inspiration from video feeds of animals and landscapes from other locations and pulling still images from those scenes. The goal is to simply compile a lot of images that work as input for the imagination. The motive to begin with must be simply to respond openly and honestly, to record without judgement any moment that feels significant. The “why” is more often grappled with in the consideration after the fact, and in the space between paintings.
Alex Hutton lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He received a BFA from The Cooper Union School of 2014. He has shown work in group shows at Project V Gallery, Site: Brooklyn, and Magenta Plains Gallery in New York. Additional work can be viewed at www.alexrosshutton.com.