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.

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