Jane Hatchett

English major, Studio Art minor

My art practice is a manifestation of my own internalized emotions, related primarily to family dynamics, memory, familial history, and the duality of distance and connection. I work mainly in drawing and painting, but I am responsive to the needs of the work, so I often explore new media such as sculpture and installation. My practice is a culmination of experience, facets accumulated throughout my life, thus constantly growing and changing. I have been immersed in a family that heavily values the arts, from literature and studio art to music and theatre. The influence and care from my family have enabled me to pursue my own passion for creativity, and my practice is a reflection of gratitude and appreciation for those gifts. 

My process is a balance of careful contemplation and introspection, along with gestural and instinctual marks. My works are often medium-to-small in scale, intimate, and visually tactile, even if they are out of reach to the viewer’s physical grasp. I draw to directly translate feelings of nostalgia, distance, and connection onto a flat surface, while also beckoning the curious gaze of the viewer. Most importantly, as my pieces are a vessel of emotional experiences from myself as the creator, I want the audience to have a kind of emotional experience themselves, regardless of whether they are aware of the context or intention behind the work.

The Duchess and Her Horse

graphite powder on paper, graphite powder on cast plaster

Jewett Art Gallery

Her Mother's Eyes

charcoal on paper

Jewett Art Gallery

Landing 34.391519º N, 77.594683º W

casebound book with mixed media (water, ink, typewritten text), housed in a pine box with sand, shells, driftwood, phragmites reed

Jewett Sculpture Court

This body of work navigates my experiences of memory, connection, and distance with family, particularly with my grandmother and grandfather. This project combines my interest in drawing, painting, and bookmaking, with some more sculptural elements accompanying these pieces. Although the project as a whole intermingles visually disparate pieces, as a collective this project addresses different aspects of my relationships with family members.

In Her Mother’s Eyes, I use the gestural and malleable qualities of charcoal and graphite powder to make the touch of skin against material more prominent and pronounced. Using charcoal, I physically touch and manipulate the pigment on paper to blend and refine marks, but beyond this utilitarian approach to haptic drawing I then use direct touch to interrupt the rendered image – my grandmother’s, mother’s, and my own eyes – blurring and disjointing the neatly layered charcoal. 

Collaboration between myself and my family has also become an important element of this project. For The Duchess and Her Horse my grandmother created three drawings by smudging the graphite powder into paper and I responded to her work. I also worked with my family in my artist book project, Landing 34.391519° N, 77.594683° W, with my grandfather’s recounted history of his beach house comprising the book’s content. I processed these words by arranging them deliberately on the pages of the book, altering the spacing and physical arrangement of these words with a typewriter. Through a balance of collaboration/proximity and distance/independent inspiration, this project exists within a space of the in-between regarding my relationships and connections with my family. 

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