[3] Hutchinson took an art course while a student at Agnes Scott College[9][10][note 1] and subsequently studied at the National Academy of Design where she won three awards, one each in sculpture, drawing, and etching.

"[6][note 8] Early in 1934 Hutchinson was given her first solo exhibition and two of her paintings were purchased by the new High Museum of Art in Atlanta.

[18][38][note 9] Appearing at Midtown Galleries, the solo exhibition drew praise and generated the most detailed consideration of her work to date.

[note 11] She also began showing in group exhibitions sponsored by the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors whose juries presented her with awards in 1934, 1935, and 1938.

[49][note 13] At that time she also became a member of the New York Society of Women Artists, showing in the tenth annual exhibition of that group and eliciting a favorable comment on one of her paintings.

The group was a prestigious one, including Alexander Archipenko, Charles E. Burchfield, Arthur Dove, William Glackens, Harry Gottlieb, Edward Hopper, Walt Kuhn, Georgia O'Keeffe, John Sloan, and Bradley Walker Tomlin.

In reviewing the show Howard Devree saw a decade of progress in her paintings as she gradually moved toward "simplification, sureness, subtler color values, inspired by a lively decorative sense.

"[76] Later that year the critic, Margaret Breuning, called it a "startling" canvas that "hits you between the eyes at first viewing, but has nothing to say after this first violence of onslaught.

In showing a young couple studying a sheet of music—the man being an African American and the woman a white person—she hoped to convey that "through the arts racial barriers are eliminated.

Both times she made light of her career, explaining in the first of them that her great success when young was in playing singles tennis rather than in painting, mentioning her failing grade in a college art course, and lamenting that a prize for work in sculpture while at the National Academy led merely to work "painting flowers on waste baskets.

"[9] In the second she explained that she could not abide the rigid technical discipline imposed by her college and academy instructors and wanted the freedom to paint portraits from life.

[78]: 384  In 1953 she participated in a group show held by the National Association of Women Artists devoted to works by members from the state of Georgia.

[99] Otherwise, in the 1950s and during the rest of her life she taught art in Catholic high schools in Atlanta and rarely showed her work.

[10][131][132] [note 33] She lived in New York while studying at the National Academy and remained there during the 1930s and the years of World War II but returned to Atlanta in 1945 after the death of her father.