County Road 20 & Teal Ave., oil,
8 x 10 in.
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Ray Hassard: You do so much plein-air painting, Marc, that I thought we'd start with a really broad question: What are you looking for when you go out to paint? Around here, in Ohio and the Midwest in general, we don't have really grand scenery. I have a painter friend from Mexico who compared the Ohio landscape to "a plain, middle aged woman's face." When you're painting up there in Minnesota, without mountains, rocks, and surf, etc, how do you make that "plain face" look exciting?
Marc Hanson: Don't get me wrong, I love mountains, oceans, jungles, and all of that. But if I head out on the county road behind my house to paint, it's familiar to me, and I'm most comfortable finding a new perspective on places I've been to. Despite the lack of grandeur or drama, there is every single artistic element to provide challenge and inspiration there that you’d find in a more picturesque location.
The challenge is not what you paint, but how you paint it. A quote from Charles Hawthorne's book, Hawthorne on Painting, that I use as a guiding mantra is, "It is so much greater to make much out of little than to make little out of much, better to make a big thing out of a little subject than to make a little thing out of a big one.... Don't strain for a grand subject—anything is painter's fodder." He also said, "The vision of the artist is the vision to see and the ability to tell the world something that it unconsciously thinks about nature." Those two statements alone allow the artist to spend an entire lifetime in the backyard, if they choose, and feel that they're doing something as important as the painter who is painting the Grand Canyon, the French countryside, or the Maine coast.
Now, to get back specifically to the question, what do you look for when you're out there? I'm looking at shapes—those big, interesting shapes that all good paintings need. The shapes are what should have the most impact when you walk into a room and see one of my paintings for the first time. Then you’ll want to get closer and start breaking them down and notice color, texture, and all that. So, I'm looking at the way a creek breaks up a long horizontal against an interesting sky, or the way the trees are massed. When I'm in a landscape I've seen dozens and dozens of times and know that it will be a long horizontal with, say, a big tree breaking the line, then I'm looking for interesting shapes, maybe those little dark notes that break up the horizon. It’s all design, really.
RH: It reminds me of that old axiom: The more you look, the more you see. I have been to places on paint-outs that seemed to hold no promise, only to discover more than I could paint in a lifetime after I slowed down and started actually looking.
MH: Well, it does take a little acclimating, especially if you travel to a place that's brand new.
RH: Ah, there I disagree with you. When I go someplace I haven't been before, I am usually so excited by the newness of things that I can hardly wait to paint it. I'm running after that “first impressions” feeling. Sometimes after the painting is done, I think, Gee, I shouldn't have just grabbed the first thing I saw, I should have slowed down a bit.
MH: You need to breathe in the landscape you're in, the new color key of the light. As trained artists, we can always make an image, but to get the essence of what's happening, we need to sit back and take a deep breath. We need to absorb what the place is all about. That adds a dimension to the painting beyond just making a pictorial statement.
You know, it's taken me years to finally feel that I can pay attention to the conceptual/spiritual side of being a painter. We struggle, or I should say I struggled, to get the skills needed to be a painter. Drawing, color, composition, materials and methods—they all require a lifetime to feel like one has just scratched the surface. I did not crawl out of the cradle being called Michelangelo. I think being a painter and being an artist are two different things. A “painter” is someone who has a handle on, a mastery, of the materials, the methods of painting, and the five or six basic elements needed to design and execute a painting. Being an “artist” is moving past materials, techniques, and subject matter into being a painter who reaches deep inside and is able to make completely personal statements about their world and how they see it. That transcends just being a “good hand,” as I like to call it.
We see so much really good technical artwork, but it's not often that we see spiritually moving paintings, those that make us even cry at the sight. When I saw Sorolla's painting, Sewing The Sail, in St. Louis, it blew me right out of the water. That painting, and others of his, went beyond mastery of technique and materials. It took my emotions somewhere deeper than any painting ever had, or has since. The effect it had on me will be with me forever. That's a goal to strive for as a painter... that's what being an artist is to me.
RH: Sorolla was overlooked and even scorned for quite a while after he died. But my Mexican painter friend told me two things about him: One, his students used to burst into tears watching him paint, and two, they said of him (not in a critical way) that he painted the way a pig eats. That is, he was consumed with painting and thought of nothing else while doing it.
MH: One of my favorite quotes from Hawthorne's book is, "Go out like a savage, as if paint has just been invented!" Was it he or Henri who said "Paint like a dog going for a bone..."? Good stuff!
I had been taught so many principles about painting over the years, yet I had never seen it all put together and made sense so beautifully in one painter's work. I stood in front of Sorolla's paintings, slapping myself in the forehead saying, "Of course!!!" There's no way in hell that I could ever paint like that, but he made it look so beautifully simple. He affected my emotions just with his use of paint! I didn't respond to the subject matter emotionally--the paint quality itself made me cry, something that only other painters would understand for sure! On the painting I mentioned, also called Mending the Sail, it was the boldness of letting reds, crimsons, blues, and greens—all part of the geraniums in the picture—just run and drip down the linen. Then he'd come in with a brush load of opaque paint about 1/8" thick and place it exactly in the right spot, the right value, color and all, and not touch it again. That's stuff that I'd never seen done so well before, and on a painting the size of a wall! It was just beautiful to see and I've never been affected like that by other artists’ work.
So, I realized that while the skills are paramount for a painter, to become an artist requires a soulful searching each and every time I paint. That makes it hard sometimes because that ideal doesn't come easy and in fact is pretty rare. It's much easier to just do the rendering and not have to find out what it is about the subject that moves your soul. But that challenge really is what makes painting a meaningful lifetime occupation for me. If it was a lifetime of simply rendering, I might just go build boats.
RH: Soulful searching—can we do that when it’s 10 degrees out there, or 110, the light is changing fast, we have wet feet, and the bugs are biting?
MH: I think those adverse conditions can actually help! When it's cold or the bugs are out, I think you react a little more purely, instinctively. You want to get the heck out of there. The experience is much more one from the gut, one that pulls your basic instincts into play and one that can end up producing a painting that is much more to the point than when the conditions are '”beachy” keen! You don't muss and fuss as much. Maybe you think a little more clearly and right to the point and there's no wandering during the process. I don't like putting on the -90-degree boots, layers of clothing, climbing into the truck, dealing with oil that is like sludge in the engine, stiff cold fingers or wind. But time and time again, it's those paintings that have more than just the pictorial elements in play. They're more likely to have a sense of place and spirit that people seem to connect with, even if they don't know anything about my experience painting them.
RH: Can you tell me what moves your soul about a location? Obviously, you have more of an emotional connection painting a Minnesota field than the Tetons, but why? And how do you get that to the viewers?
MH: I honestly don't know that I'm in that mode, not just a rendering mode, until I’m in the painting process and the painting begins to take me along. I don't mean to sound mystical, but maybe it is a mystical happening. I might first choose a subject because of interesting color, light, design—the usual motivations. If I'm successful with the painting, at some point in the process my recollection of being there painting is not available. I can remember all of the details later, but while painting I'm lost in the entire process and not conscious of anything that is going on around me. That's when I’m “in the zone,” and the painting is taking me for a ride. I love that feeling—there's nothing else like it.
The viewer can tell when the painting has affected the painter to that degree, although they may not be aware of it. I hate to keep quoting Hawthorne but he said it so I can't without quoting: "...Painting is a matter of impulse, it is a matter of getting out to nature and having some joy in registering it. If you are not going to get a thrill, how can you give someone else one?" I think if a painter works from that point of view, the viewers sense it in the paintings. I'm not sure how to explain much more about it. In fact, I'm not sure it can be explained. But I know it exists, and when I'm off the mark I know that I don't feel good about the painting either.
In my classes I have a card that I hand out that basically says: Before all of the Drawing, Form, Value, Color, Edges, Movement, Texture, and the entire list of other artistic elements and principles that we have at our disposal to make paintings with, the first most important thing to know before they start is Concept. What are you making this painting for? What is it that you want to tell me? It's the What and Why before the How and When. Without a Concept, the drawing, value, color and all have nowhere to go, no place to be. The idea is what a painting is, not just a bunch of paint slapped on a panel. That idea does not have to be—although it can be—shocking, earth shattering, or obvious. It can be very, very subtle. But it has to be there in order to properly organize the painting from the first mark. How do you know where to place that first mark without a concept of the statement you are about to make? I know that if I start a painting without that vision of a finished painting in mind, it will almost always fail to meet my personal standards or at the least be less than inspired.
RH: Getting back to those less than ideal conditions, I think we all develop shortcuts, formulas we use as building blocks. We're used to painting on sunny days and know how to knock those shadows in fast. But on a cloudy or rainy day or under unusual circumstances, we can't fall back on those.
MH: Yes, exactly. I think that's what happens on end-of-the-day, fast paintings. Those can be some of the most exciting images, and it’s just a reaction, an instinctive reaction, to the best of your ability.
You can make anything work, as long as you’re using the right values. If you're being accurate, and you understand the value system you're looking at and your light, you can plug in a lot of different colors.
One of the things that pastel has done for me is to improve my color choices in my oil painting. With pastel, if I've built what I feel is an accurate value system, I might reach down and pick up a blue-green where I wouldn't normally use it, where I might use a violet, and try it to see what it looks like. If it’s appropriate, it creates interest. With oils, I have to think to mix it, to create an unusual color choice. Pastel has taught me to think about mixing color choices that add to the painting’s interest and variety.
RH: I heard you have a really good color and value exercise in your workshops.
MH: I do! We divide a panel into four sections. On the first area we break the image down and limit it to three or four basic shapes and values, in black and white. And that’s it—flat pattern. The second area can have half-tones and accents, light and dark, but still is black-and-white. The third section repeats the first black and white panel but converts the value pattern into color. In the last area, we basically do a painting repeating the second one, but in color, including half-tones and accents refining the image. It teaches you to relate color to value, and that's the most important thing to get a grip on when you're starting to paint. For me, my biggest progress as a painter has been developing my eye for value, not color necessarily. You can be somewhat arbitrary with color.
Author and artist Harold Speed wrote two books that are bookshelf worthy for any artist: Oil Painting Techniques and Materials and The Practice and Science of Drawing, published now by Dover Publishing. In the first book he has a chapter addressing Tone Values—what we now call values—and he's talking about Whistler's subtle perception of delicate tonal relationships. He then goes on to say, "Not that form and color were entirely absent. Form is the only instrument in the visual orchestra that can play a solo and exist, as it does in drawings (line drawing), without the support of the other two. Tone and Color must always have the support of some form, must be some shape. Tone can exist without color, as in monochrome, but not without form. Color, on the other hand, cannot exist visually without the support of both of the others. A color mass must always be some shape, and it must occupy some relation in a scale from dark to light. This is why all efforts to create an independent color of music by means of such devices as a color organ have failed. Color thrown upon a screen without any tone or from values is vapid in effect."
So to me what he says is that the most important thing for an artist to master is drawing, in order to be able to describe Form (shapes, masses, etc.), which can exist alone. Next we need to understand the value scale and relationships of the values of Forms or Shapes as they relate to other Shapes in the picture. Finally comes Color. Color can't be used appropriately (in a representational painting) without understanding how to Draw (Form), the Value (Tone) structure of the subject and how Color relates to those Shapes and Values.
This is exactly how good art schools, ateliers, and teachers teach. First they teach drawing, then black-and-white rendering of form, either as drawing or painting, and finally color. Until I'd read this in his book, however, I didn't place the hierarchy in context. I found it a valuable way to describe the reason for drawing, then value, then color to students, especially when I spend two or three days in a five-day workshop making them do black-and-white exercises. Everybody wants to get to color first, but then they ask, "Why can't I get the color right?" Well, let’s go back and look at value, and see if you're getting the value right first. I think that is one of the most important principles of painting to understand first.
RH: I heard Richard McKinley talk at the IAPS convention in Albuquerque last May, and he has a saying: "Value does all the work, and color gets all the glory."
MH: Exactly.
RH: Do you paint anything other than landscapes?
MH: Sure, I’ve painted other subjects, but overall my focus is the landscape. I'd actually like to do more figurative work, but if we are talking about what it is that stirs my painter’s soul, it’s the landscape. That's my vehicle for expression. That's what makes me want to go out in 10 degrees and paint. I'd rather go out when it’s 10 degrees than set up a still life in the studio, to be honest. I'm not a big gun-wielding, knife-throwing outdoorsman, but I've spend a lot of time outside and I have a real innate sense that that's what I'm meant to be painting.
RH: Have you always felt that way?
MH: I traveled a lot as an Air Force kid. So if I didn't know the people, I didn't know the place, the language, at least I always had this connection with the landscape. There was always something interesting I could connect to. I think that's where it comes from.
RH: Is there anyplace you want to paint but haven't?
MH: I'd like to paint in Southeast Asia, I think. I like the lushness of it. And I would like to go back to Norway. I used to live there as a youngster, and I'd like to go back and paint. I have great memories of the landscape.
RH: I have great memories of very wet feet there!
MH: Yeah, it can be wet, but it’s gorgeous anyway. And I would definitely spend money to go paint in England. My favorite time of year around here is August, down by the river bottoms when there's that heavy atmosphere, those big masses of tree shapes, and the recession is just so pronounced. I love that English-wet-old-black-oaks-and-pasture feeling. I love the mountains, but as a painter I actually like that humidity more. I'd like to paint the swamps in Louisiana, I think.
RH: A few years ago I was going to drive out to Denver. When I told people about it, the reaction was always, "Ugh, that drive across Kansas is soooo boring." When I mentioned it to an artist friend, she said, "Oh, Kansas is wonderful. You'll love it!" I said she was the only person to say that, and she answered, "Well, the others weren't artists, were they?"
MH: Isn't that the great thing about what we do? I mean, the fact that you can go through Kansas or Nevada or Nebraska—to name my three most troubling states to have to drive through—and even driving through the desert before you get to Reno, in northern Nevada, where it looks dead, it’s gorgeous! And we're people who get to look at it or take the time and have the interest in looking at it that way, because that's our job.
RH: That's exactly how I feel about urban blight.
MH: I know a number of painters in St Paul and Minneapolis who love to find a rusted old railroad yard and paint it. I love looking at them.
RH: Years ago I was in the art museum in Toronto in front of a painting of a rail yard by one of the Group of Seven, maybe Lauren Harris or A.Y. Jackson. It's a beautiful painting, but the man next to me really surprised me when he suddenly said, "What a shame he wasted his talent on such a tawdry subject." I replied that train yards are as important as mountains, or beautiful women sitting in chairs, or any other conventional subject matter. They’re part of life, and art is about life.
MH: Yeah, it’s about what the artist saw, something about the subject that others didn't see.
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