Adrian Hatfield

Untitled, 2007
Mixed Media Resin Painting

My name is Adrian Hatfield and I am a painter and sometimes sculptor. And I’m making work about the role of science and religion in contemporary society primarily.

I do what I do, I think, because I am fortunate enough to have the luxury to be able to do it. And I think art making is an incredibly self-gratifying activity in that I get to surround myself and really immerse myself in ideas and imagery that are important to me and I’m passionate about, and then I get to make objects that I want to see that I haven’t seen elsewhere.

What the value of that is, I’m not quite as sure about? It certainly has a strong value to me in again kind of a self-gratifying way in that I get to interact with other people and if somebody reacts to one of my pieces and I can have a conversation about something that I care about. I think that the value to the arts community as a whole, is that you can have a group of people who are maybe thinking outside of the box. When we’re living in this world where we’re inundated with formulaic movies and mass-produced objects, being able to go and talk to people who are maybe thinking about things a little differently and making things that might even surprise me, I think that’s a valuable, vibrant, and rich aspect to our society.

The question about what the value of this is on a greater scale, I think varies. I think about big aspects of social change, I think rarely is the fine art world part of that. But I look at something like Jeff Koons’ “Flower Puppy,” which is a gigantic sculpture of a puppy made out of entirely of flowers. I don’t know one person who doesn’t love that piece. And the amount of joy that something like that brings to artists, to non-artists, anybody who encounters that, I think there’s an incredible value in that. Ultimately you’ve got a lot of really passionate people working hard making things that they’re passionate about, and I just feel really fortunate to be able to be a part of it.