Observer Effect

Member Jason Hatchell explores the paradoxical nature of abstract art ahead of his Frederick Harris Gallery exhibition this month.

Jason Hatchell has been performing his whole life.

Born into a family of musicians and performers, it was only natural that he would find himself singing on stage by age 5.

“Getting on stage and making myself uncomfortable has always been a means of challenging myself,” explains the Club Member. “For me, it’s important to be uncomfortable.”

From coming to Japan, learning Japanese and getting into business here, putting himself in new situations has been a constant for Hatchell. That journey has cut a path towards paint and canvas. “As I got older, the thrill of the stage gave way to the quieter pull of visual art,” he says. The results of that journey will be on display this month at the Frederick Harris Gallery.

Bringing his paintings to the Club is a return home of sorts. Hatchell’s family not only has deep roots in the arts but also in Japan. “My grandparents were missionaries in Osaka after World War II. My mother was born and raised in Japan, along with her four brothers.”

As the third generation of his family to live and work here, Hatchell arrived in 1995 on the Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme, better known as JET. A year later, he wanted to pursue an MBA, though realizing that he would first need some real-world experience, he joined a small Japanese company. However, it quickly became clear that the ceiling for advancement “was not glass, but rather brick,” so he tried doing something else uncomfortable: stand-up comedy. In Japanese. In Tokyo.

To support himself in the comedy world, Hatchell joined the recruitment industry. While reasonably successful in comedy, performing in NHK Hall as well as on TV and radio, he compared his earnings in comedy to the recruitment industry. “I looked at what a first-year MBA, a top recruiter in Tokyo and a comedian earn and I was like, okay, I’m going to stick with this recruiting thing!”

That turned out to be a good choice; 25 years later, his success in the recruitment industry speaks for itself. And while Hatchell keeps one foot in Japan every day, for the past seven years he has managed his recruiting business and Tokyo-based team from his home in Oregon, where he has a studio filled with every imaginable paint, tool and canvas to unleash his creativity.

The art he creates there reflects a world view that has evolved from his adventurous path through life.

“Abstract art is often misunderstood, dismissed as a chaotic mess of lines, shapes and colors that just don’t make sense,” notes Hatchell. “However, the true beauty of abstract art lies in its open-endedness, its willingness to embrace uncertainty and its ability to reflect the very essence of what it means to be human: searching for meaning in an inherently senseless world. To view abstract art is to engage with this unknown, just as living fully in the moment means embracing the reality that we exist within the confines of the inherently unknowable.”

Using Schrödinger’s cat as a metaphor, Hatchell likens the creative process to opening the box to check the condition of that famous feline, whose state is determined only by observation.

“The creation of abstract art is an act of simultaneously existing within multiple possibilities, where the creator isn’t bound by the logical constraints of representation,” he says. “It’s the space where everything and nothing are true at once, and where the artist must trust that the meaning will unfold as they engage with the canvas—just as Schrödinger’s cat exists as both alive and dead, and yet is neither until seen. The act of creation itself—not the final product—becomes the point of exploration.”

The abstract artist, Hatchell continues, must push beyond what they already know, questioning assumptions, breaking boundaries and living in the moment of transformation. “Art is not static—it evolves, just as we must.”

Abstract art is a reminder that we cannot always make sense of everything, he adds. “The magic happens when we stop trying to impose meaning and instead allow it to emerge from the raw material of the moment. Perhaps, in that, we find our truest form of freedom: the ability to live amid chaos, to embrace uncertainty and to create meaning out of the world as we see fit—as utterly impossible as that is.”

In that way, the artist, like the philosopher, like the person living fully, is in a constant state of becoming, Hatchell says.

“The endless pursuit of meaning is the essence of sentience. Cease doing so, and you are no longer alive, no longer human. The true beauty of both art and life lies not in the final product, but in the journey. I know that’s a pithy statement, but based on my own journey, I find it to be empirically true.”

Members are invited to find their own meaning in Hatchell’s works at this month’s exhibition and to meet the artist at a reception on April 15.