Erin Hanson on Her Petite Works

I have been painting landscapes since I was a young girl, getting my inspiration from backpacking and camping trips around southern California. Growing up in noisy, smoggy, and concrete-lined Los Angeles, these childhood escapes into the quiet, wide-open spaces of nature had a profound effect on me, and I still find nature to be the most beautiful and inspiring subject I can paint.

After graduating from college with a degree in bioengineering, I decided not to pursue a career in a laboratory, and instead, I moved to Nevada and became an avid rock climber. This was the first time I had seen Red Rock landscape in person, and I was so inspired by the vivid colors and stark beauty of the desert that I made a decision to create one painting every week, just 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 style of painting in oils that I call “Open Impressionism.”

My chunky, abstract painting style developed from painting nothing but rocks for two years. I loved the rocks I was climbing, and 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 as I saw it.

When I moved back to California a few years later, I began painting the rolling hills and curving lines of oak trees I found in Paso Robles and other rural areas. I applied my chunky/rocky painting technique to these curving lines, and I found that the “squared-off” brush strokes that worked so well to capture desert rocks also worked well to capture trees and hills and gave my work a unique aspect that set it apart from other artists’ work.

I began creating “petite” paintings as little studies to reference when painting a larger piece. Oftentimes, I found I loved these little painting sketches better than the finished paintings. The sketches were looser and more confident than the finished paintings; I was able to capture an entire vast landscape with only a few dozen brushstrokes that seemed to magically fall in the exact correct position.  After a few years of painting these sketches, I started painting these small works deliberately, and The Petite Collection was born. Now I find a particular joy in creating small paintings. It is an exciting challenge to simplify a complicated landscape and find one or two elements to focus on in a petite composition.  I am more willing to experiment and find new ways to combine color and shape when I am painting a petite. I find this refinement of technique then spills over into my larger paintings, and I grow more confident in my color choices and brushstroke placement.

Petite paintings are the jewels of Open Impressionism. I hope you enjoy their scintillating colors and light.

Erin Hanson