Carlson Hatton: Counterfeit Immortality

Good Mother Gallery is pleased to present a new solo exhibition by Los Angeles-based artist Carlson Hatton. 

Carlson Hatton is a Los Angeles-based painter whose work is characterized by dense patterns and vivid color, exploring the fragmented remains of a world that has lost visual coherence. His compositions, filled with abstracted cartoonish forms, evoke large gatherings and moments of social unrest, such as migrations and protests. Hatton traces his early artistic influences to his attempts at drawing beloved childhood cartoons, a process that introduced him to the principles of Cubism long before any formal art historical education.

Oscillating between recognition and gestural abstraction, his paintings feature figures cobbled together within hallucinogenic landscapes, celebrating paint, color, and gesture while carrying strong psychological undercurrents. Disjointed noses, fingers, rocks, entangled feet, and hooves emerge from a vibrant whirl of controlled chaos. His use of mixed media—including acrylics, airbrush, and pastels layered over mono-prints and graphite drawings—enhances the sense of figures existing in tension with themselves and their surroundings.

The contradictions of Los Angeles play a central role in Hatton’s work, where graphic elements from skate and street culture merge with a neo-Impressionist approach to the natural world that envelops the city’s sprawling, disjointed landscape.