By Max Venezia
Towson University students got an inside look at the creative process Thursday when Scott Hutchinson gave a slide-by-slide review of his 18 years as an artist and animator.
Speaking before an estimated 50 people at the College of Fine Arts, Hutchinson said that his goal in graduate school was to work on various techniques that allowed him to show drama and movement through light and color.
His interest in the Manna Machine, an ancient astronaut book that tells of a device that was given to the Israelites when they went on their 40-year journey in the Sinai Desert, led him to write a thesis on it and base much of his work for the next four years.
From 1999 to 2002, Hutchinson said he focused on drawing in black and white and not painting in order to refine his style.
“This was where I noticed that without color, my content really came forward,” the George Washington University professor said.
Hutchinson, whose work has been shown at the Arts Club in Washington, the Brooklyn Arts Space in New York and other galleries, said he began focusing more on the human form and technology in 2002.
He said he tried to depict how technology was supposed to help people but was only holding them back and hindering them.
Hutchinson said his “big break” came in 2003.
“I had to go back and discover what painting meant to me again,” Hutchinson said. “I felt like my work became less honest over the years.”
From 2003 to 2004, Hutchinson said he did nothing but self-portraits.
Hutchinson’s very first animation came from two of his self-portraits. His second one, titled “I Don’t Know,” explored a more whimsical side of himself while incorporating sound and a larger quantity of self-portraits in his animations, he said.
His third animation, titled “Yeah Yeah Yeah,” drew laughs from those in attendance as self-portraits of Hutchinson’s mouth repeated the word yeah in humorous tones and voices.
“It may not seem it, but my work is something I take very seriously,” Hutchinson said. “But it is a little psychotic at times and, hopefully, funny.”
Hutchinson described his seventh animation, “Blur,” as his “most honest” work.
“I’m so many things throughout the day,” he said. “A father, a husband, an artist, a professor. It’s a lot, but I have to keep it all together.”
“Blur” depicted several emotional self-portraits of screams and breakdowns that Hutchinson said at times he wanted to act on.
“I’m giving people a taste of me, but in little snippets,” Hutchinson said.
Hutchinson has been working on time displacement drawings and animations as well as “rotoscoping,” an animation technique in which animators trace over footage frame by frame.
“I do self-portrait because it works for me,” Hutchinson said. “It’s free. I’m not restricted by time or models and when inspiration hits I can just work.”
Hutchinson also credits Francis Bacon among other famous artists as influences in his work. He added that he feels as though he is rediscovering the wheel. He is doing things that have already been done, he said, but in his own way.
“The hardest part is trying to create and promote yourself,” Hutchinson said in an interview after the nearly hour-long speech. “I spend a lot of time in my studio thinking, ‘How am I going to get this on a wall.’”
Hutchinson said that students and young artists should be inquisitive, be honest, and do something that they love.
“It’s not easy,” he said. “The world doesn’t think it needs it, but if you love what you do, it definitely makes it easier.”