Born and raised in San Marcos, Texas on September 6, 1936, Hutson began making abstract paintings in San Francisco without formal training when briefly (ca.1960-62) an assistant to Frank N. Ashley, a realist painter who had studied with and assisted Reginald Marsh at the Art Students League in New York. This apprenticeship was Hutson’s introduction to fine art and where he noticed and admired art by Sargent Claude Johnson, David Park, Elmer Bischoff, Joan Brown, Richard Diebenkorn, Frank Lobdell, Deborah Remington and others.

As Hutson familiarized himself with these artists, he completed and exhibited abstract art at the John Bolles Gallery, Fred Maxwell Gallery and was included in an exhibition at SFMoMA. Moving to New York in 1963, Hutson spent the next four decades traveling to more than twenty-six countries, painting in England, France, Holland, Italy, Senegal and Nigeria, where from 1974 to 1976 Hutson was employed as a Graphic Arts Officer at The National Museum in Lagos.

During continuous residence in New York City (ca. 1976-84) artists Joe Overstreet and Alvin Loving introduced Hutson to Robert Blackburn, Vivian Browne, Frank Bowling, Peter Bradley, Melvin Edwards, Robert Indiana, James Little, Kenneth Noland, Howardena Pindell, Robert Rauschenberg, Larry Rivers, Haywood Bill-Rivers, William T. Williams, and Jack Whitten who were all Hutson’s ‘neighbors’ in SoHo and mid-town Manhattan.

In Europe and West Africa, Hutson met and associated with artists Iba Ndiaye, Souleymane Keita and others. Hutson also met abstractionists such as Edward Clark, Sam Middleton, Joan Mitchell, Beauford Delaney and Barbara Chase-Riboud and had significant professional contact with Robert Matta-Echaurren as consequently he met Max Ernst, and Wifredo Lam when completing an edition of etchings at the George Visat Print Making Workshop in Paris.

During the past thirty years, Hutson has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions at museums and galleries internationally and throughout the U.S. Hutson’s paintings are in numerous public and private collections including the National Museum of Arts, Havana Cuba, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY, The George Visat Collection, Paris, France, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY, The Newark Museum, Newark, NJ, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA and Boysmans-Van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam, Holland.

In 2010, a collection of Hutson’s art and his library was donated to and is kept at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania where he is currently the Jennie Brown Cook and Betsy Hess Cook Distinguished Artist-in-Residence.