Noel Hatfield: Iowa's Self-Taught Oil Painter

Noel Hatfield has only been painting for a handful of years, yet his work output would tell you a different story. Landscapes are not his bag. Portraits, mostly of pop culture icons like Frida Kahlo, John Wayne, Edgar Allen Poe (and many more available for sale on his Etsy site: IowaArtOilPaintings), as well as a new favorite after a recent commission Willie Nelson displays a diverse use of color and brush strokes. Noel Hatfield seems to be constantly pushing to harness his style, Impressionism, impasto, or a style all unto his own. He continues to try new things, new subject matter, new materials — aluminum siding now instead of strictly canvas. And although it took some digging, he even has a dozen original works that he has worked on and reworked numerous times to get just right.

Since he disliked how acrylic paint felt, Hatfield taught himself how to paint with oils and now has somewhere between 300-400 paintings, most unframed but some framed, which he did himself. He told me he never really learned to do anything; he always figures it out and will give anything a try. In a past life, Hatfield and his wife owned an antique store, used to make furniture, worked for a telephone company for thirty years, and served in the Army during the Vietnam War.

All of his work is stored in his basement studio, where he somehow finds the time to paint when he’s not babysitting his grandchildren, caring for his wife, and fixing up his beautiful hundred-year-old home just south of Des Moines. Noel Hatfield is a quiet and gentle man who seemingly would go out of his for anyone, including meeting me in his driveway at 8am on a hot summer day, but somehow finds time to continue to paint.