Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20At an 1896 exhibition in Moscow, a young Kandinsky misread a Monet Haystacks canvas as unreferenced form and embraced his confusion as a new source of poetic license. What followed was a century-long bout of anxiety among artists whose response to what became abstract painting was to form into movements of like-minded individuals, each seeking ideologies they hoped would provide a sense of order for this unprecedented expansion of painting’s range. With a century of art movements now behind us, it seems most painters have no need for ideology. They feel at home in painting’s unrestrained climate. They welcome a free range of possibilities. Perhaps more than any other painter of his generation, Julian Hatton embodies this new open spirit. He does not just accede to an unrestricted atmosphere but enthusiastically embraces its potential for complexity. He revels in the struggle to calm the chaos of invention. The swiss-watch construction of each of his compositions testifies to his ability to riff without losing sight of the melody. Regardless of his starting point, usually a reference to landscape experience, and regardless of whether his paint manipulations remain fixed to the surface, whether they imply trees and lakes or suggest some vague figural presence, his talent for weaving together these often-contradictory optical events is remarkable. Conventionally speaking each picture in this exhibition is a revelation of sophisticated visual thinking. In a more unconventional sense each is a metaphor for the visual opulence of nature itself.