A Conversation with Erin Hanson

JD

Dear Erin Hanson, it is a true pleasure to have you. Welcome to CAI. How have you been? 

EH

It has been a busy year! In addition to creating at least one painting every week and running my print business and three galleries, I have a 3-year-old daughter who also keeps me busy.

JD

You must be superwoman! First and foremost, could you tell us a bit more about your journey to becoming an artist—in particular, why you started to paint landscapes and how you developed your unique and recognizable technique? 

EH

I have been painting landscapes since I was a young girl. I got my inspiration from backpacking and camping trips around California. Growing up in Los Angeles, these escapes into nature profoundly affected me, and I still find nature to be the most beautiful and inspiring subject I can paint. 

When I graduated college and wasn’t quite sure what to do with my life, I moved to Nevada and became an avid rock climber. This was the first time I had seen a red rock landscape in person, and I was so inspired by the vivid colors and stark beauty of the desert that I decided to create one painting every week, to see where my art would take me.

I have stuck to that decision ever since, and in the past 15 years, I have created almost 3,000 paintings, and through this process, I have developed a unique oil painting style that I call Open Impressionism.

JD

Would you say your subject has also been partly responsible for developing your technique? Would you paint the way you paint if, for instance, you decided to become a portrait painter instead of a landscape painter? 

EH

I think my chunky, abstract painting style developed from painting nothing but rocks for two years. I loved the rocks I was climbing; their sharp contrasts, dark outlines, and distinct planes of color were characteristics I emulated in my work. To capture these aspects of rock, I developed a technique in which I pre-mixed my entire palette of colors and then applied thick brush strokes of paint to the canvas without layering or blending. This gave a spontaneous, textural look to my paintings that appealed to me and captured the vivacity of the desert. 

When I moved back to California after a few years, I started painting the rolling hills and curving lines of oak trees I found in Paso Robles and other rural areas. Without thinking about it, I applied my chunky technique of painting to these curving lines, and I found that the squared-off brush strokes that worked so well to capture desert rocks also worked great to capture trees and hills and gave my work a unique aspect that set it apart from other artists’ work. 

I can’t say what my style would have been if I had been inspired by portraits, for instance, instead of desert landscapes. I know that whatever I paint now (including portraits), that same chunky, abstract, squared-off look still expresses itself.

JD

Besides being an excellent painter, you are also a terrific businesswoman. How did you experience the road to becoming a professional artist? What challenges did you encounter, and what are your challenges today?

EH

I love the business side of art. I love crunching numbers, working with my marketing team to develop new campaigns, and then running over to the warehouse to dig into inventory issues. It is challenging to build an art business from the ground up, but I have a very dogged approach to business and life in general, and I don’t give up easily on a course of action. Through trial and error and many years of 80-hour work weeks, I have built my business until I now have three retail art galleries (that display only my artwork), 20 employees, and an 18,000-square-foot studio and print production facility in the heart of Oregon wine country.

I built my business the way I recommend to any artist who wants to take their career into their own hands: doing art festivals. Lots and lots of art festivals. At one point, I was doing 20 shows a year all over the western U.S. and painting madly in between to keep up with the demand. This allowed me to build a loyal collector base that loves my work, and I could pull myself up by my bootstraps without relying on galleries for business management.

JD

Instead of breaking through as an artist by being represented by a first-tier gallery, you are representing yourself successfully with The Erin Hanson Gallery. Was this a conscious and well-thought strategy? Or did it happen organically? 

EH

I wouldn’t say having my own retail galleries was a conscious, well-thought strategy — I was perfectly happy doing my 20 festivals per year and making a modest living without any employees. Then one day, the city of Burbank knocked on my door (literally) and told me I was producing “too many canvases” (no joke) and that I had two weeks to move my business out of my house. While I had been idly thinking it would be nice to have a separate studio and showroom one day, this event made my decision imperative, and two weeks later, I was situated in the first iteration of The Erin Hanson Gallery. 

Once I had tasted how wonderful it was to have my showroom with a permanent display of my work (instead of the hard work involved in creating mobile galleries at art festivals every other weekend), I started expanding. Before long, I had moved into a 5,000-square-foot warehouse in Los Angeles’ art district, and after that, I expanded to San Diego and finally to Oregon. Since I was in a warehouse, I did not have walk-by traffic. Instead, I used inbound marketing to bring people already interested in my work into my gallery. This business model worked well for me, and I kept pouring on the coals.

Eventually, I decided to open up some small retail galleries in other areas that were already popular art destinations (Carmel-by-the-Sea and Old Town Scottsdale) to use the walk-by traffic to replace my art festivals. This gave me more time to paint and focus on other areas of my growing art business. 

When COVID hit, I knew I had to do something brilliant to keep everything afloat. Inspired by an article I had read about a 3D-printed replication of a van Gogh painting nearly indistinguishable from the original, I invested half a million dollars in high-tech scanning equipment and a 3D printer. Before the year was out, I was successfully making my 3D prints, dubbed “3D Textured Replicas,” which were the perfect middle price point between my stretched canvas prints and my original oils. 

JD

Enough about art as an industry or business. Let’s talk about your art a bit more in-depth. Before we dive into your connection with impressionist and post-impressionist masters such as Claude Monet (1840-1926) or Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890), how do you feel you relate to your contemporaries? Of course, there are obvious similarities to, for instance, David Hockney (b. 1937) — in particular with his Grand Canyon paintings from the 90s — Wayne Thiebaud (1920-2021). Still, from a painterly perspective, we also encounter interesting technical and visual parallels with the likes of Claire Tabouret (b. 1981) or Emma Webster (b. 1989). 

EH

David Hockney has inspired me because he is a living artist who paints landscapes and nature (as opposed to abstracts or sculpture), and yet he is one of the most successful artists alive today. I just looked up Hockney’s Grand Canyon paintings since you mentioned them; they are beautiful! I was similarly impressed by Georgia O’Keeffe and the fact that she built a career painting nature and the desert landscapes she loved. I visited her Ghost Ranch compound in New Mexico some years ago, and I have wanted my own compound ever since then! 

As far as my similarity to other painters, I can’t say that I have spent much time studying other artists’ work. I got my degree in Bioengineering, and my inspiration to paint has always come directly from nature. I work hard to emulate the beauty I find out-of-doors through painstaking trial and error and the experience of painting 3,000 paintings. I work very differently in oils than is traditionally taught in schools (I took art lessons when I was younger, so I know how I am “supposed” to paint.) I imagine that other artists have done the same thing as I have, which may account for the parallels seen.

JD

You describe your way of painting as Open Impressionism. Could you tell us more about your affinity toward historical impressionists? Did it come naturally? Or was it an eye-opening experience when beholding the works in the flesh by the likes of Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), or Vincent Van Gogh? 

EH

It’s funny, but I didn’t even consider my style to be Impressionism until enough people told me so after doing years of art festivals and talking to ten thousand people about my paintings. I have always admired the impressionists Monet and van Gogh in particular.

I have this memory as a 10-year-old kid helping my mom plant irises in the garden. I was so excited to see them bloom because I thought they would be like van Gogh’s Irises I had seen recently in a museum. When the flowers finally bloomed, I remember being disappointed and realizing that art was much better than real life. Beginning from this moment, I have been inspired by Gauguin and van Gogh to rely on my emotional color sense instead of painting a strict duplication of the landscapes I see. 

JD

Could you explain to us the terminology when it comes to ‘Open’ Impressionism? Why not Neo-Post-Impressionism (what a mouthful), Contemporary Impressionism, or Postmodern Impressionism? In what way are your paintings open? Do we need to approach them as an open window to the world in the tradition of Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574)? 

EH

After having hundreds of people tell me that my paintings were unlike anything they had ever seen, I decided to create my own name for my painting style. I like the word “open” in Open Impressionism because it denotes a more open approach to impressionism, a more open approach to color, and also, my works are inspired by the open air, with a touch of plein-air style. 

JD

Is Open Impressionism a description of your particular practice, or has it become an actual contemporary art movement? If so, who else is practicing Open Impressionism, and in what way do you reflect upon these disciples? 

EH

Open Impressionism is being taught in many art schools across the United States of America. I get emails almost weekly from art classes trying to emulate my style. I can see a painting from a mile away inspired by my work. Yes, it would be best if you used my techniques to create an open impressionist painting, but there is also a movement I have started to take up a career as an impressionist.

I frequently hear from other artists that I have inspired them to pick up the brush again after giving up on painting or that I have inspired them to “loosen up.” Just as Hockney and O’Keeffe inspired me in their ability to create renown by painting natural landscapes and aesthetic beauty, I believe that I am now inspiring thousands of other artists to develop their form of beauty and try to make a living as an artist. I aim to create a true rebirth of impressionism in the contemporary art market.

JD

You paint alla prima, painting wet in wet — or rather, wet besides wet. What makes your technique so different from other alla prima painters? 

EH

First, I pre-mix my entire palette before picking up a brush. I mix every variation of hue and value that will appear in the painting from only 4 or 5 pigments, organized in long rows of little heaps of color on my 24” palette. I then try hard not to overlap my brush strokes, letting the underpainting outline the brush strokes as much as possible. This means I must get my brush strokes right the first time and paint a tree in only six brush strokes instead of 60, for example.

Again, this is an unusual oil painting method, giving my work a fresh, spontaneous aspect. Since I developed my technique by painting lots and lots of rocks, these methods came about naturally through trial and error to capture the colorful changes in the rock faces as best as possible. I did not consciously try to make a technique different from the norm, and I worked from the necessity to make my paint do what I willed them to do, to capture the brilliant colors of nature.

JD

Are there different readings to your paintings? Is it a visual celebration of the world’s beauty? And what makes them relevant today in a contemporary context?

EH

I try not to add any significance to my paintings. I give the paintings a prosaic name and let the viewer experience them from his unique perspective. My work is a celebration of aesthetics, and I am inspired by the world’s beauty, color, and light, but everything beyond that is up to the viewer. 

JD

What inspires and convinces you to paint a specific picture? And when is the picture finished? 

EH

I look for unique compositions and intriguing contrasts in nature. I can get inspired by something as simple as a line of overgrown grass catching the last rays of the sun, the unique bends of an oak branch, or the pattern of light and shadow filtering down through a grove of trees. When I get ready to paint, I try to focus on just a straightforward message in the painting, like the brilliance of a particular hue of color, a single tree standing alone on the edge of the Grand Canyon, or the abstract shapes of the sky as seen between crisscrossing branches.

I make my plan, do a series of sketches, and pre-mix my palette, and then I am ready to paint. I try to do all the “hard work” of painting before I ever pick up a brush, so I don’t have to make decisions while I am painting, like what is the correct color/value for this part of the mountain or how dark does the water have to be in the reflections. By making decisions such as these ahead of time, while painting, I can focus instead on the natural rhythm of the brush strokes and the joy of color itself, and I find I don’t have to self-correct or alter or blend my brush strokes once they have been placed on the canvas. 

I know when a painting is nearly finished when all the underpainting has been covered. I then make sure the painting flows without sticking anywhere, and I make slight adjustments to contrast as needed to control the eye’s movement through the painting. Once I have reached a point where the painting has an emotional impact, I know I am done. I have always regretted placing even one more brushstroke after that moment has been achieved. My policy has been that once I sign my name on the canvas, I cannot place another brush stroke, and I send the painting away to be scanned before I can start self-doubting my creation.

JD

You clearly have a very consistent visual language and artistic production. The public always expects something new from artists as the years go by; likewise, artists have the urge and desire to continue reinventing themselves. How does it relate to your practice? What can we expect from Erin Hanson in the future? 

EH

Since I paint every day, I do not see the gradual changes in my technique that occur naturally over the years, but my style does seem to change a bit from year to year. For example, when I was pregnant with my daughter some years ago, my paintings became increasingly monotone, but when she was born, my paintings became brighter and more colorful than ever before —I didn’t notice this myself, but someone pointed it out to me afterward, and it was true! 

The best way I know how to push myself as an artist and discover new ways of capturing light and color is to do a photo safari in an entirely new type of landscape. For example, I resisted painting oceanscapes for ten years, but when I finally started painting them, it opened up a new challenge and avenue in my work. The result was a method of painting coastal from the unique perspective of my background and techniques. 

I feel like there are endless ways I can continue to push myself as an artist and endless landscapes that I have not had the chance yet to explore. When I went to Japan a few years ago to capture the famous Japanese maple trees at the height of their fall color, that one trip led to a collection of 50 paintings of Japanese maple trees, and my style improved and matured as I fought to capture those brilliant hues of gold and orange. 

My next goal is to take a trip to Europe and explore the landscapes that inspired the impressionists of the past.

JD

Thank you so much for your time. I really enjoyed this conversation; it has been a true pleasure.

EH

Thank you for your insightful questions. It is always interesting to take a step back and look at my artwork with fresh eyes.