A Biography of Erin Hanson - Growing up in LA

Erin Hanson Newsletter No images? [Click here]( [Erin Hanson - Landscapes in Oil]( ["Firewheels on Green"]( Portrait of the Artist Inspiration Drawn from Nature Dear {NAME}, I was interviewed recently for my new [Wine Country]( book, and I thought you would enjoy reading the biography: Erin Hanson grew up in Los Angeles, the daughter of musicians. Television was shunned in the home: hers was a family of Boy Scouts, who nurtured and shared a love of the outdoors. Family getaways consisted of camping and hiking, while in the home everyone was a voracious reader. Two of Hanson’s three siblings followed in their parents’ footsteps by playing a musical instrument of their choosing, while she focused instead on drawing and painting, but with the same focus and disciplined practice known to musicians. At the age of seven, her first art teacher, Cesar Jiminez, introduced her to oils, acrylics, watercolors, pastels, and anything else she was interested in. He would continue to foster her talent for nine years consecutively at the private school she attended. Hanson’s father recognized her budding talent from early on and encouraged her to sketch five drawings every day in the ongoing supply of sketchbooks he provided her. Her preferred subject material was the natural world: pictures of trees and animals filled her sketchbooks. At the age of ten, Hanson was asked to paint an album cover for a friend’s father of a native Incan girl carrying buckets of water to her village. The stack of 100 two-dollar bills she received in payment was her first taste of how it felt to make art for a living. After this first heady encounter with professional success, the ambitious preteen went on to commission portraits of family dogs. To her delight, this, too, proved a productive venture. Hanson began working as an understudy at Paytin Place, beginning at age twelve; this motley crew of independent artists painted huge acrylic murals for worldwide distribution. Hanson would go on to work her way up through the ranks at Paytin Place throughout her high school years. To this day, murals that she helped paint can be found in far-flung corners of the world, including the famous Stratosphere of Las Vegas, with subjects as diverse as stampeding buffalo, card-playing dogs, and abstract circus themes. Her favorite part of the day was clambering up several stories of scaffolding to paint groves of trees: a telling precursor to her later enthusiasm for rock climbing. (above) Erin Hanson in the palms t-shirt, working in the mural studio, age 12. (above) Erin, age 6, hiking in the San Gabriel Mountains A key technique that Hanson learned during this early period was how to precisely create and mix colors. As an understudy at Paytin Place, color-matching was one of the first skills she was tasked with. The primary artist would create custom colors in small Dixie cups, to be used in the next section of the painting, and Hanson’s job was to exactly duplicate those color combinations in much larger volumes. This skill formed her working understanding of color theory and provided the foundation for her ability to create a seemingly infinite variety of colors and tints from a limited palette of four or five pigments. While still in high school, Hanson obtained a scholarship for a live figure-drawing class at the Otis College of Art and Design, one of California’s leading art institutions. There, her instructor introduced her to the concept of using loose, bold strokes, with an emphasis on spare, descriptive lines rather than excessive attention to detail. The wide, fast strokes that she learned how to use in her charcoal sketches would later go on to become a characteristic hallmark of her oil paintings. Forming an integrated composition with the use of minimal lines was a skill that fascinated her and would go on to form the groundwork of the development of Open Impressionism, a style she has both pioneered and mastered. Driven by a curiosity to understand the underlying workings of the natural world, Hanson attended UC Berkeley – the highest ranked and most selective of all public universities in the US for undergraduate education – to major in Bioengineering. In spite of an incredibly demanding academic course load, including multi-variable calculus and nuclear physics, Hanson still found time to paint. During this time, her artistic interests turned to graphic novel artwork and Japanese landscape painting. Elements of the bold ink outlines representative of these styles can still be found in her work to this day. After graduating college and having settled in her own mind that art, not science, was a more direct address to the “big questions,” Hanson decided to refocus on her art with renewed vigor. At the age of twenty-five, she moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, to start an eBay business selling warehouse items. Her first day in town didn’t go as planned: the electricity in her new apartment hadn’t yet been turned on. She decided to make the best of the situation by trying her hand at rock climbing at the outskirts of Las Vegas near Red Rock Canyon, a sport she had long admired but never previously attempted. The magnificent vistas that awaited her there literally changed her life. Not only was the stark desert scenery, with its mesas and rainbow-shaded rock formations, the most beautiful thing she had ever seen, but she was also discovering, for the first time, a deep love for rock climbing. “I don’t know of a more immediate way to gain appreciation and understanding of the underlying forms and patterns of nature than to be hanging off a cliff and seeking out the next foothold,” she has admitted, somewhat jokingly. The curious combination of the canyon’s vast, solemn beauty and the intense thrill of climbing and interacting with its rock formations on a very visceral level led to Hanson’s moment of epiphany: she realized she had discovered a subject on which she could focus and dedicate her artistic efforts. Red Rock Nevada was the first oil painting she produced in her desert series. This small plein air composition, measuring only 14 inches wide and painted at her campsite that first morning in Red Rock Canyon, was the painting that launched her career as a landscape artist. Hanson’s artistic career began in earnest in those sparse, mountainous regions of the American Southwest, and she has never looked back since. The stark, dramatic vistas of the desert landscapes which had so captured her imagination would go on to became the central theme of her first important body of work as a fine artist. The hundreds of shades of color in the sandstone cliffs fascinated her, and even in this early stage she concentrated on evoking the abstract emotional qualities of the desert landscapes in her paintings. Meanwhile, Hanson had also found that rock climbing was the perfect companion activity to her career as a landscape artist. She moved in with a group of rock climbers close to the base of Red Rock Canyon, where she would spend two years of intense involvement in the sport. (above and below) Erin rock climbing at Red Rock Canyon, age 25 Like so many visual artists before her, Hanson loved living in the desert. However, this was also a busy time for her: in addition to pursuing her dream of being a professional artist, she was also tirelessly building her eBay business. During whatever free time she could find, she was also becoming a skilled rock climber. Realizing it would be all too easy to get distracted from her artistic path, she made herself a promise to create one painting every week. It is very telling of Hanson’s disciplined character that she has never to this day broken that promise that she made, now over ten years ago, and is a main reason she has gone on to become one of the most prolific fine artists of our time. Eventually, Hanson’s outstanding work ethic began to pay off: the eBay business she had worked so hard on establishing finally became self-sustaining, at which point she was able to dedicate her efforts to painting on a full-time basis. Hanson also opted to move back to Los Angeles, which was quickly becoming the hub of a flourishing arts scene, where she threw herself into painting with a fierce dedication. The fruits of her labor did not go unnoticed: Hanson rapidly began to achieve critical recognition as well as professional success as a landscape painter. A blessing disguised as a setback launched Hanson’s already successful artistic career to a whole new level. Although she had by now made a name for herself in the art world, she was still using the three-car garage of her home as her painting studio. A neighbor took note of the parade of delivery trucks making increasingly more frequent stops at her house to pick up paintings she had sold and finally filed a complaint the she was violating residential zoning ordinances. Hanson was forced by this circumstance to relocate into a professional studio near downtown Glendale, California, the front of which was an upscale class gallery which highlighted her latest paintings. Her growth as an important professional artist, and her recognition as such by critics and serious collectors, has continued unchecked since then, and she now has a beautiful and expansive gallery in San Diego. A trip to Paso Robles, California, in 2010 began a critical new chapter in Erin Hanson’s career. Seduced by the abundance of color and textures, as well as the variety of its geography, Hanson’s oeuvre took a turn away from the stark desert landscapes towards the lush, vibrant scenery of California wine country, which she refers to as her “green phase.” It appears to be more than a passing phase: her love affair with California wine country is still ongoing, and shows no signs of abating any time soon. In fact, Hanson now explores and finds inspiration from the wine country regions of other states, including Oregon, Texas and Virgina. Combining the emotional resonance of 19th-century Impressionists with the lavish color palette of Expressionism, Hanson’s unique style has come to be known as “Open Impressionism.” She continues to make regular pilgrimages to Paso Robles, which she refers to as her adoptive home, as well as other viticulture regions. Hanson’s style has evolved beyond her earlier sedate, comparatively safe treatments of the American Southwest into a looser, freer style, enabled by a deep mastery of oil painting and color techniques. Her paintings of America’s wine country are characterized by freedom, lavish color, and they are always infused with a spirit of discovery and adventure. This collection forms a visual narrative of an important new artist at the height of her expressive powers and artistic craft, to the delight of her audience. In her own words: “My goal as an artist is to bring the beauty of nature to the viewer. I want you to see the colors of the land. I want to capture the emotional gradient of the landscape — to dramatize it. Each painting is more of an emotion than a representation. My paintings are an escape from the everyday. They are idealized versions of life.” Hanson’s paintings are fueled by passion and guided by discipline. She still maintains a rigorous schedule, painting about ten hours every day and using weekends to travel to shows and exhibit her work throughout the US. She is also a voracious reader of books on painting techniques, oil color, and visual composition. This is an artist who continues to learn and grow, and who runs no risk of becoming stale or irrelevant any time soon. Her paintings are avidly collected by private and museum collections worldwide, often claimed while still wet on the drying racks. Written by Anja Wulf for the book [Wine Country: Impressions in Oil](. [The Erin Hanson Gallery]( [Facebook]([YouTube]([Instagram]([Pinterest]( The Erin Hanson Gallery in Oregon 1805 NE Colvin Ct McMinnville, OR 97128 (503) 334-3670 The Erin Hanson Gallery in Carmel San Carlos between 5th and 6th Carmel, CA 93921 (831) 574-1782 Please call or text us at the number above to make an appointment at the gallery. 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