Gaylen Hansen: Three Decades of Painting
12:00 PM     Missoula Art Museum

Gaylen Hansen: Three Decades of Paintings was organized by Washington State University Museum of Art Curator Keith Wells. The exhibition is a 30-year retrospective of paintings by the Palouse, Washington-based painter, Gaylen Hansen. Hansen, a WSU Fine Arts professor emeritus, has exhibited his paintings in New York, Berlin, Singapore, Beijing, Los Angeles, Seattle and other cities in the United States. He is the recipient of a 1989 Governor's Award from the State of Washington and a 2001 Flintridge Foundation Visual Arts Award. This is Hansen's first major exhibition in Montana. Please join MAM at the following events: Curator's Gallery Talk, Keith Wells, June 12, 7 pm; Artist Reception and Gallery Talk at Artini, July 17, 7pm.

MAM Curator Stephen Glueckert says, "We are proud to host this traveling exhibition by an artist for whom we have the utmost respect. We are a small institution, so the opportunity to feature work by an artist who has such far reaching influence is in itself gratifying. Hansen's influence is widespread, and his aesthetic voice consistent. He has pursued his discipline as a painter for thirty years, and the exhibition demonstrates a determination and fortitude that is seldom matched."

Keith Wells says the exhibition traces Hansen's evolution as an artist.  "From his tenderly rendered narrative paintings of the 1970's, to his bolder canvases in which his palette becomes more vibrant, the compositions more complex, and the imagery more iconic - it's all represented in the exhibit."

Hansen, 86, says he chronicles what amuses and interests him most: fly fishing, his surrounding rural land, the animals that populate that land and his environmental concerns. A reviewer in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer says Hansen "paints the human comedy as if it's coming to a close." Born and raised on his grandparent's farm in Utah, Hansen attended Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, Utah State University, the Art Barn School of Fine Arts and the Salt Lake City Art Center.  In 1953, he earned an MFA degree from the University of Southern California.

The exhibition is accompanied by a full-color book designed by Marquand Books of Seattle and includes: introduction by WSU Museum of Art Director Chris Bruce; text by WSU Museum of Art Curator, Keith Wells; Hansen's own commentaries in conversation with Wells on more than 20 individual paintings; a tribute to Hansen by cartoonist and fellow artist, Gary Larson; a chronology highlighting important events and persons in the artist's life and more than 100 color plates.

WSU's funding for this traveling exhibit and programs is provided by the Robert Lehman Foundation, the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation and the Samuel H. and Patricia W. Smith Arts Endowment.  Additional funding is provided by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, Paul and Nancy Winklesky, the Friends of the Museum of Art, the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture and the Washington State Arts Commission.