ART
21
“Nocturne,” an oil painting by Kevin Hutchinson done in 2008, shows the
artist’s expressive tropical scenes.
ried just six months. “My wife told me she wanted me to try
painting full time and would support us,” he says. “It took
some time, but I was soon making as much money as a fulltime
artist as I had been working at my job.”
Hutchinson, who is still involved in yacht design, says
branching out in his art has helped him find his own voice.
He experimented with abstraction, but the classic Florida
landscape always called him back.
“I tried a lot of different things, but I found that when
I fell back into doing what my family does, the paintings
were better and everyone loved them.”
His subject matter varies from detailed paintings of boats
and sport fishing to retro-style graphics depicting tourist
scenes of Florida, as well as tropical scenes of the Florida
Keys and the Bahamas. He is represented by Peters Gallery
of Stuart and participates in two Stuart art festivals.
“I’ve always loved the islands,” says Hutchinson, who
traveled to Jamaica and the Bahamas with his family as a
child. “My earliest memory is hanging off the bow of a boat
and looking down at a hammerhead shark in the Bahamas.”
Hutchinson laments that those places that his father and
uncle were able to use as subject matter for their Florida
landscapes hardly exist now and seasonal residents don’t
know what a royal poinciana is because the tree blooms in
May and June after they’ve left for the summer.
“I think people have an idealized image of the beaches
in Florida, of the palm trees and the sand, but really, to find
that scene, I have to go the Bahamas now,” he says. “I think
it is harder for people to understand the traditional Florida
landscape because that land doesn’t exist anymore.”
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