High Desert Journal: Gaylen Hansen / Interview excerpts for High Desert Journal

Gaylen Hansen / Interview excerpts for High Desert Journal

Interview

Not long ago I went to visit Palouse, Washington, artist Gaylen Hansen (HDJ issue #3). Hansen, of course, is the 89-year-old neo-expressionist, famous for his over-sized grasshoppers, incongruous ducks and dog heads, and a diminutive cowboy figure, the unflappable seeker Hansen calls the Kernal, Hansen's "alter ego" in paint. What follows are excerpts from our 2 1/2 hour conversation recorded in his studio in October, 2010.

Hansen, for any who don't know, has exhibited in New York, Berlin, Singapore, Beijing, Los Angeles, Seattle and dozens of other cities in the United States. He is the recipient of a 1989 Governor's Award from the State of Washington, a 2001 Flintridge Foundation Visual Arts Award, and his work is collected in over 50 public and private institutions. Hansen grew up in rural Idaho and earned a MFA from the University of Southern California, and for 25 years he taught fine art at Washington State University until his retirement in 1982. He is represented by Linda Hodges Gallery in Seattle, Washington and to view a full resume and more images of his work you can go to their website: www.lindahodges.com

Hansen:

I lived through most of the 20th century and as you know that was fairly active in producing all kinds of isms, all kinds of theories, and I did most of them. I did a lot of abstract painting, and there was a period in the 30s and 40s when some of the abstract painters were saying you should eliminate subject matter altogether, any kind of representation was irrelevant, that a painting was about painting and not something outside it. Supposedly, if you looked at a painting with subject matter you couldn't appreciate the form. There was a competition between the subject and the form and I thought to myself, "well I don't really experience that." I felt it was like someone making that up to justify their elimination of the subject, justify their way of working, which is fine. I like to paint without recognizable subject matter and it's a real nice thing to see a painting where you're really just experiencing the orchestration of the elements of the painting. But there is also something to be said for having the combination. Well, it isn't quite as simple as that, the content/form argument has to take into account and whole huge range of content themes, and you have to admit that there are a lot of content paintings that very strongly emphasis the form. I mean even Rubens with his voluptuous women, he's got a physical kind of rhythmic form going that's not just pure depiction of subject.

Figure/ground is a foreign concept [in this culture]. Japanese, Chinese, Indian culture emphasize figure and ground. Our culture doesn't do that so much. If I hold up my two fingers here most people see here's a finger and here's another finger, but they won't see the space in between. My work is all about that kind of stuff, the space between. That's part of our problem in dealing with the environment, we don't see between the spaces. We're just seeing what we want to do. And the unintended consequences are always popping up because we don't see outside of the narrow thing we're dealing with. This is one of the big things environmentalists are dealing with, whole ecosystems are out there and everything is interrelated, and people go “ohhhhhh” as if that's some big revelation. I theorize that one of the major problems facing humanity is how to get our brains to think about things outside of our stereotypes, our doctrines, and still think about them so that it is not just chaos. Of course I don't think about all these things when I'm painting, but its part of the process.

I gave a talk in the Seattle Art Museum once and my painting of a giant grasshopper on the back of a sofa came up and I was asked,“why did you make this grasshopper that big?” And I said that grasshopper is the right size. It has to be that big. Otherwise there's no point to the painting. I mean it takes all the drama out of. What is the point of the painting? It makes its own point. I mean all kinds of writing and poetry does that right? Meaning is verified within the work, not outside of it. In other words you suspend disbelief because it's ripe for things to be happening the way things are happening relative to other things. But in this case it does have an interesting effect to have a huge grasshopper there. It's like if you were to have a huge grasshopper like that this is the way it might feel. It's an intellectual proposition in a way, and that's the way a lot of art is. If this was possible this is the way it would look or feel.

I think the overall effect of the painting, the way it makes you feel is the main thing. I don't expect you to look at it and see this and that and therefore it's okay. It's all a matter of appreciating things that are happening, and not because they confirm with some sort of idea or principle, but because they are enjoyable that way, because it produces something that you can enjoy looking at. I don't want to get trapped in the idea people having to understand the theory in order to appreciate my work, or that the theory verifies it. The theory doesn't verify it, your experience of it does.

For example if I do a drawing of a magpie and then I do another drawing of a magpie, I can look from one to the other and say, “This one here is really doing something for me.” It's not that one is conforming to some kind of theory and the other isn't, it’s that one is more alive than the other. Either a painting lights you up or it doesn't and often we try to sidestep that. I think this is very significant in teaching. Students ask themselves if their work is conforming to set constructions. I understand it's dangerous to believe in your emotions and feelings without someone telling you its okay, but there is a certain amount of work out there that helps support this point of view. I mean I'm not totally all by myself.

I don't want to get too obtuse about this. But if you take a factual mind and you're trying to make sense out of my paintings factually it doesn't work too well. For me it just makes sense when I'm putting together a bunch of objects not to worry about their relative size. I'm not trying to get them to do anything. I expect a lot of people are delighted to find these animals and bugs as big as people, they don't have to have a reason. “Hey that's great, they look okay,” they say.

Indian miniatures had an influence on me and told me you can do these things with size and scale. They do it all the time. And they've done some of the greatest paintings that have been done. They're small, but they're great. I was also influenced by the Italian painter Morandi. What he was mainly concerned with was a kind of feeling but he got that through the relation of figure and ground, and also how objects related in particular ways.

Placement of things is extremely important, but not in the sense of trying to find the right way, just trying to make things looks as though they were inevitable. In other words it’s not like a recipe for composition. A long time ago a friend and I were setting a table. We had several objects on the table and we started playing with them seeing how many different ways we could arrange them on this table. We found we could put all of them in the corner, we could line them up along one edge, we could put them in the middle, we could scatter them out, we could dump them on the table, we could put a table cloth over them, all the possible things we could do. And we recognized that different configurations had different feelings. Lining things up produced a different feeling than scattering them. It isn't as though this is a right way and that's a wrong way, these are two possibilities, but amongst them all there were certain arrangements that seemed to be stronger or more interesting. So in all this variety there was a judgment being made too. That is really difficult to grasp for many people because people want a more specific way of making judgments of things. I have students do this. I gave each of them three objects and told them to put them together in different ways. And every one of the did the same composition. There were twelve kids, and every one of them placed the objects the same way. I don't know where the hell they got it from. It was a furniture store composition with the bottle here and the plate there and the piece of fruit just so. And I said well that's good, that's fine, let's try some others. And they did the same thing again. Getting them to place these objects in different ways was the most radical thing these students had encountered in their lives. And it wasn't a test about being right or wrong. Their whole lives, their whole school system was based on being right and wrong, and so this was an extremely radical experience. I didn't realize how radical it was and right away I had to give them assignments that you could say this is good or this is not so good. Anyway my work is involved in that and it leaves you sometimes in an ambiguous situation.

I also have a kind of practical streak in me that my more fantasy world plays off of. And yet my invention is at least somewhat rooted in reality. I hike a lot and the contact of your feet on a trail is a big deal as far as I'm concerned. I mean nobody talks about that but it's a big deal, the feel of your feet on the ground. In painting there is also the practical thing of the surface and moving the paint around and there's this contact thing going on. It's not like cyberspace. My paintings look like they have a surface, a real surface, an illusion of something but a real surface.

I'm not on a crusade. I'm not writing a book of philosophy or something. The biggest message in my work is that it is so wonderfully positive. Delightful actually. Makes you feel good actually. That's good enough isn't it? That said I never try to paint what I think someone will like. I try to keep the process clean and basically once they're done I'm one of the viewers. Of course I take satisfaction in the knowledge that I'm the one who did them, I'm not saying my ego is totally out of this, but sitting here in Palouse whatever fame I have doesn't count for much. It's just me doing my thing. I'm the first viewer of my work and I'm satisfying me as a viewer as well as the person who makes the thing.

I got started on painting and I've been trying to figure it out ever since. I don't know what's going to happen to the paintings after I'm gone. I don't think too much about whether I'm going to be remembered or not. I speculate on the body of work that I've done is quite significant for this period. But I could be wrong. It may not be significant at all. The problem is always to get going on something that works. It's not easy, it isn't always fun. And as much as I've painted I can get to a point where I can't do a damn thing. Part of the keeping going is that the paintings suggest certain reads, certain possibilities and I think that's because I've kept it open. I haven't stayed with the same form, so I'm not stuck. If they don't work I put them upside down on the floor as tarps. I don't treat them preciously even though I may think they're the best thing being done, they're not precious. I mean, I've got footprints on some of them. You can have the attitude of not making them precious but at the same time thinking what a wonderful amazing thing they are. So you can have these two thoughts together which I think is a healthy way to be. I mean it's better than thinking “oh these are great.” It's better that you can walk on them.

End.

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It's wonderful to read more about this artist. I ran across a book of his paintings recently and fell in love with them right away. I can see how living in the Palouse area influenced his work , a strangely beautiful environment. I do think he will be remembered, no doubt

Posted by Bonita Paulis, 13/01/2011 4:43pm (1 year ago)

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