We will hear more from Frank Hutchison. After 33 years of teaching at Minerva Academy, there is plenty of time for his own art

First there is an exhibition in the dome hall of the academy building on the Praediniussingel in Groningen. By the time this article appears on paper, it will already be over. Isn’t that disappointing, such a short exhibition? Isn’t that a bit poor as a reward for years of loyal service?

“It is what is,” says Frank Hutchison firmly. “Someone is coming to film. I have everything well recorded – I have also made a book. I’m 67. I’m retiring. Soon it will really start: my new life as an artist.” That smile again.

Was it bad, teaching? Well, no, he says. ,,It was delicious. I did a lot of freshmen. Just imagine: they come in, they know almost nothing and at the end of the year they have made a huge leap. It was incredible every time.”

There were times when there were bad days, he admits. He was enjoying painting himself and had to teach. Or meetings – not exactly his hobby. Most of the time it was a lot of fun. And handy for those who have to pay for gas and electricity.

The biggest change

The inevitable question is about the biggest change Minerva has undergone in the past thirty years. Internationalization, Hutchison answers firmly, the arrival of students from the Baltic states, East Asia and Southern Europe.

When he started as a teacher, there was discussion about figuration versus abstraction and the conceptual. “Today’s students are talking about how they can merge different disciplines to tell what they want to say. It has become more open.”

Then on to his own art, where he continues now that teaching is over. The domed room offers an overview of his oeuvre. That is to say: a choice from the paintings he himself has in De Biotoop in Haren, his living and working place.

Where to start? Hutchison chooses Nevertheless , also the title of the book about his work. It is a both funny and sad painting: short sawn-off tree trunks that together, viewed from a certain perspective, nevertheless still form a tree.

Second look at reality

Irony returns more often in his work. “It’s not that I have to, it’s because I am,” he says. “It is a second look at the reality that I apparently have. You say something, but also mean something else.”

You can call irony cowardly, a means of not taking a clear position and always being able to back out of it. Irony has a way of getting through it, Hutchison admits. But cowardly? No, that is not the way he sees it and means it.

He walks to another painting, The perspective of Groningen . We see the back of a set that is held upright by support beams. We see several references to gas extraction. And we see a funny tent, as a temporary home.

The perspective of Groningen dates from three years ago. “I recently read in the newspaper that someone actually put a tent next to his ruin,” he says. “Reality has caught up with me.” Indeed, that’s not fun.

Wrong choice

Hutchison – an English ancestor once crossed the North Sea as a pilot and then stayed in Holland – was born in The Hague in 1957. The fact that he ended up in Groningen is the result of a wrong choice. “I first went to the art academy in Enschede. The way they taught there at the time, with a lot of emphasis on the conceptual, turned out not to be for me.”

His eye fell on Minerva, where he was able to receive lessons in the 1980s from Mathijs Röling, Diederik Kraaijpoel and Martin Tissing, diverse painters with a similar principle: anyone who wants to express themselves well with paint must first master the technique. Hutchison developed a style halfway between figurative and conceptual.

Realistic and alienating

Landscapes, portraits, scenes, objects – he is hard to pin down. His paintings are realistic, but also alienating. Even if they are not ironic, in the sense of funny, there is still something ambiguous about them. There is a will to mean more. Call it a desire to have a second life.

That’s going to start now.

But first the goodbye. The program includes speeches, music, viewing art and chatting. And as a surprise: a singing painter. To demonstrate what that sounds like, Hutchison picks up his phone. Not because of the music, but because of the self-written lyrics.

A little later the sung melody of True love in the dome hall, made famous by Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly in the film High society . For the occasion, the painter replaced the words ‘true love’ with ‘farewell’ and goodbye’.

We’ll see more of Frank Hutchison.