Having grown up in a military family, Marc
Hanson’s youth was spent on the move. He
was born in Oxnard, California and spent some of his early school
years in California. But his geographical résumé soon
included Alaska, Florida, Arkansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and
Norway. After his father’s retirement from the Air Force, Marc’s
family settled in the small northern California community of
Loomis where he finished high school. His father was a talented
artist so he grew up with his dad’s paintings and cartoons all
around the house. Doing art work of some kind was a common activity
all through his youth.
Marc began college as a biology major but soon realized
that because of the amount of illustration that he was doing in
his papers, he might want to pursue an art education. He applied
and was accepted into Art Center College of Design in Pasadena,
California, majoring in illustration. After Art Center, with wanderlust
still in his blood, Marc moved to Minnesota in 1979 and has been
a practicing artist there since.
Marc teaches plein air landscape painting nationally.
He says, “I
love working with other painters in their pursuit to better their
craft. My goal is not to have them assimilate my style and technique,
but to teach them how to more closely examine the subject and apply
the principles that representational painters must follow to become
effective visual communicators.”
His work has been shown in galleries and museums around the country
and the world since the early 1980s. He has studied with some of
our great painters including Richard Schmid, Dan McCaw and Zhang
Wen Xin, to further his own knowledge. He is a signature member
of The Oil Painters of America and a founding member of P.A.P.W.
(Plein Air Painters West). Marc has garnered a number of national
awards including placing three times in The Pastel Journal's 'Pastel
100' competition, and winning an Award of Excellence at the Oil
Painters of America's National Exhibit in 2000 and 2007, and has
been featured in several national magazines including Plein Air
Magazine, The Artist's Magazine, American Art Collector and The
Pastel Journal.
Artist’s Statement
I have pursued a career as a painter for many
years now. Along the way my methods, materials and the subject
matter of my paintings have evolved. Initially, all that I wanted
to paint was birds in a very naturalistic manner. I can’t
remember when I wasn’t mesmerized by birds and flight. They
were a very natural subject for me and my need to express the beauty
that I saw in the world no matter where I lived. The birds as subject
came first and the desire to paint followed. As I grew in ability
and artistic knowledge there was a role reversal. The painting
became more important and the birds as subject less so. My real
interest and challenge as a painter became color, value, edges
and shape and how to best manipulate those core principals into
effective visual statements. Still a ‘naturalist’ at heart,
the landscape has become the focus of my paintings.
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