Larry Hatfield
Art Related Remembrances and Influences
October 24, 2006

I’m just a simple boy from Illinois. I grew up in Rock Island next to a wooded area. As a kid, I don’t remember many artistic influences. The major ones had to be Art teachers. I did well in Art classes, so I liked Art class. I won some poster contest awards. One was to promote good dental care, and the local Black Hawk Bank, I think, sponsored one. My entry was a picture of Black Hawk, a leader of the last Native American battle with the U.S. Army East of the Mississippi River. He was a Sauk. The Sauk and Mesquakie used to hunt in the wooded area that was near my house. That certainly sparked my imagination during all the hours that I spent in that woods.

I remember hearing about a man in our neighborhood that had been to Paris to study watercolor painting.  I only remember seeing his work once at an outdoor festival. I knew him as the father of some neighborhood kids and the proprietor of a small grocery. And there was a local artist named Paul Norton whose watercolor of the W. J. Quinlan ferryboat came to my attention several times. I recall watching my mother draw little designs made up of parallel lines while she talked on the phone. She called it doodling. Since my mother was a musician, I assumed that my interest in art came from her, although, she showed little interest in visual art. My father didn’t seem to have any interest in art.

I have a vivid memory of a moment in high school when I saw a pencil drawing of a man in a striped shirt. It was done by the Art teacher on a scrap of paper. I knew that I wanted to be able to do that!

Learning to draw with a pencil came from a “freehand drawing” instructor in the Architecture Department at Iowa State University. I took all the drawing and painting classes that I could. Painting, and more importantly, seeing, I learned from Alice Davis who taught painting in the Applied Art Department. She is mentioned in the introduction of the John Updike book, Still Looking. I majored in Landscape Architecture for three years and learned about trees and plants. I switched to Graphic Design in Applied Art as my former department began to emphasize urban planning. On a senior trip, I saw an etching in a Saint Louis museum. I was taken by the quality, and character of the ink, and paper.

After college, I visited museums in London and some art dealers’ galleries. I regret not buying a small Goya etching that I wanted. I spent time at L’Abri Fellowship in Huemoz, Switzerland. There I first heard Hans Rookmaaker, Art History Professor at the Free University of Amsterdam, speak. His book, Art and The Death of a Culture, convinced me of the value of art, and that art can be about ideas. Dr. Francis Schaeffer emphasized the importance of a logical integrated life and worldview. At L’Abri,  I met a couple of students from the San Francisco Art Institute. They encouraged me to enroll there. I came close to doing that, but didn’t have the money. However, it did get me to the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1970, I took an etching class from Kathan Brown in her basement studio in Berkeley. Later she founded Crown Point Press and moved to San Francisco.

I did some design and illustration work, and even bought an etching press for my studio in Berkeley. However, the death of the counterculture awakened me to the reality that I was broke. My growing family needed income. My art career went into retirement. So, I can say that I am coming out of retirement now. My grandfather’s neighbor, Lou Black, who hung up his banjo during The Depression, inspires me. He had played with the New Orleans Rhythm Kings including Jelly Roll Morton. Then he worked for 30+ years at John Deere, Inc., came out of retirement and played the smoothest banjo jazz I have ever heard.