Julian Hatton

Critic Hovey Brock writing in The Brooklyn Rail described Hatton's paintings as having a "healthy self-confidence not only in his artistic process, but also in the very enterprise of abstract painting." Critic Peter Malone of Hyperallergic magazine described Hatton's 2019 show entitled Bewilderness as "vigorously overlapping perspectives are pulled into a unified whole made of delightfully unstable parts" that demonstrate a "copious gift for invention, expressed through witty references to flowers, trees, rivers, pathways, and other landscape elements."

Ebony wrote in 2005 in Art in America that Hatton "experiments with complex and sometimes contradictory spatial relationships" and that his landscapes "consist of Cubist-inspired fractured planes and shifting, multiple perspectives." Critic Joel Silverstein in Reviewny.com suggested Hatton's paintings "sing to each other in a high key citron-like color" and compared him to Paul Gauguin, Miró and Hofmann. He described Hatton as a "lyrical designer" who "abstracts form by promoting visual attractiveness."

Critic David Ebony in ArtNet in 1996 described Hatton's paintings:

Hatton was born in Grand Haven, Michigan. The cold Michigan climate with two months of good weather each year, contrasted with the cold flat landscape influenced his sense of color, he recalled later. He graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts in 1974 in the school's first co–educational class. Hatton graduated from Harvard University in 1979 with a major in art history. Painting in the north of France helped him develop his understanding of color and landscape. His first application to the Studio School in New York was rejected since he lacked a portfolio. He studied with painter Fernando Zobel in Spain, returned with a portfolio, and was accepted. He enrolled at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture from 1980 to 1982. After school, Hatton lived the life of a struggling artist, working at the Water Club restaurant in Manhattan for eight years.