ART
We were aware that we were living in
a paradise in transition. And we were so
grateful that we were there to see it.
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Hutchinson, in Stuart. “Baloney. I was walking on air. I still
don’t believe it.”
Interim Secretary of State Dawn K. Roberts calls Hutchinson
an artist “whose work evokes the native soul of Florida.”
His late friend, the writer Al Burt, who used Hutchinson’s
paintings on the covers of his books, once noted, “Colors
came to the eye of Jim Hutchinson in ways that the rest of
us didn’t see until he painted them with the touch of an old
master. Then, they enlivened a canvas and enriched our
perspective of the world. His works kept the disappearing
beauty of natural Florida alive (bringing) form and color to
visionary truths about our heritage.”
IMPRESSIVE COMPANY
Hutchinson joins the ranks of an illustrious group of
honored artists who have made Florida their home, and he is
among a growing number of artists from the Treasure Coast
who have been named to the Florida Artists Hall of Fame,
including Alfred Hair and the Highwaymen, and Hutchinson’s
brother-in-law, A.E. “Beanie” Backus. But Hutchinson is
a little more modest about his paintings, laughing when the
word “narrative,” often used to describe them, is brought up.
“Narrative?” he says. “Isn’t that a bad word?”
Hutchinson’s paintings, heralded both for their impressionistic
style and their historical accuracy, have long been
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Florida’s coastline is depicted in Hutchinson’s 2008 oil painting, “High and Dry.”
— Jim Hutchinson
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