Picking Dandelions , 1928
10.8 x 13.8 in (h x w)
Oil on paperboard; collection of Don and Carol Hatton

This early painting dates from Hatton's years as a BFA student in drawing and painting at the University of Kansas, where she had previously earned a BA in design. The high horizon line pushes the figures to the margins, emphasizing instead the action of the brushwork and the impasto created by Hatton's layers of paint. Although Hatton would never embrace abstraction in her paintings, she clearly relished the formal properties of paint and even toyed with expectations of mimesis by including a purposefully ambiguous figure (one child or two?) at the top center of this scene.

Other works by Clara Hatton

Red Tree , 1940
13.9 x 18 in (h x w)
Oil on canvas board
Gregory Allicar Museum of Art
Landscape , 1940
8.5 x 11.5 in (h x w)
Watercolor with graphite
Gregory Allicar Museum of Art
Pasture Lot , ca. 1940
7.1 x 9.1 in (h x w)
Lithograph on wove paper; collection of Ora Hatton Shay
Gregory Allicar Museum of Art
Bowersock Mills , 1936
5 x 7 in (h x w)
Drypoint on machine-laid paper; collection of Ora Hatton Shay
Gregory Allicar Museum of Art
Afternoon Nap , 1936
7.8 x 6.8 in (h x w)
Etching on wove paper; collection of Helen and Dick Reway
Gregory Allicar Museum of Art

More from Gregory Allicar Museum of Art

Season's Greetings , 1941
4 x 2.2 in (h x w)
Etching on wove paper; collection of Ora Hatton Shay
Gregory Allicar Museum of Art
Still life with floral arrangement and black pottery , 1940
14.8 x 18.1 in (h x w)
Watercolor with graphite on paper; collection of Susan Elizabeth Gillin
Gregory Allicar Museum of Art
Red Tree , 1940
13.9 x 18 in (h x w)
Oil on canvas board
Gregory Allicar Museum of Art
Landscape , 1940
8.5 x 11.5 in (h x w)
Watercolor with graphite
Gregory Allicar Museum of Art
Pasture Lot , ca. 1940
7.1 x 9.1 in (h x w)
Lithograph on wove paper; collection of Ora Hatton Shay
Gregory Allicar Museum of Art