Somehow It Works

Somehow It Works is a 61cm × 61cm original work by Jason Hatchell, created with spray paint, acrylic and graphite (and a ripped up T-shirt) on canvas.  

I first tried making something on this canvas more than three years ago. It didn’t work—kind of like a lot of things in my life at the time.

Sometimes, when I look back at the things I’ve made over the years, I wonder whether “what works” is about the thing itself, or really about the perspective I had on it then. I don’t have an answer for that. No one does.

What I do know now is that sometimes you have to make what you have work.

So I did. I took the old canvas, tore into what was on the surface, and made holes in it along the way. I glued an old T-shirt to the back to cover them, then kept painting, working, and going.

And then I broke out laughing.

It was done.

That is probably the most honest explanation of how I paint: I keep working, changing, covering, exposing, painting, scraping, tearing, repairing, and being utterly relentless until, somehow, it works.

Frame is not included.