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.