From the collection of:
The Kentucky Center || VAM Home

With the generous support of Fifth Third Bank, the Kentucky Center commissioned Kentucky artist Rodney Hatfield (also known as “Art Snake”) to design and paint Orchestra Luna. Hatfield was chosen to do the work because of his dual role in Kentucky as a visual artist and a musician. The piece is a backdrop that serves as a sound reflector for the classical and acoustic musical performances held in the center’s Bomhard Theater. While Hatfield had always wanted to work on a larger scale, he says he never imagined that he would do something quite this big. The sheer size of Orchestra Luna posed a physical challenge for the artist during the painting: “Maintaining my spontaneity was very challenging while constantly running up and down scaffolding.”

About the Artist

A largely self-taught artist, Pike County native Rodney Hatfield is also widely known regionally as a blues musician, having performed with the Metropolitan Blues All-Stars or similar groups since his college days at the University of Kentucky. He uses the “Art Snake” identity, a play on the phrase “art for art’s sake,” to separate his painter persona from his musician persona.

Hatfield described the relationship of his dual identities to the Louisville Courier-Journal this way: “I’ve really thought about this, and they spring from the same place. The way I approach music is very much the way I approach art. It’s not from the intellect. It’s more inspired. I paint intuitively.”

Hatfield’s use of color, primitive representations, and thematic focus on topics of death, family, religion, and music make his work resemble, stylistically and thematically, “outsider” or folk art. However, Hatfield rarely cites influences within the outsider or folk-art movement, and his work could perhaps be more accurately classified as expressionist.

Classroom Ideas

Discussion: Is this painting an effective way to decorate the sound barrier on the stage? What do you think about the composition of this work? Is it appropriate for the purpose of the work? Why or why not?

Activity: The Kentucky Center hosts different types of arts events—from plays to dance to musical performances—in a wide variety of genres. If you were to paint a stage curtain for the center, what would it have on it? Draw several ideas.

Links

View several available works by Hatfield at the Deloney Newkirk Fine Art Gallery.
[deloneynewkirk.com/DisplayArtwork.php?ID=10]

Read Hatfield’s artist’s statement at the Swanson Reed Galleries web site.
[www.swansonreed.com/pages/hatfield.html]