Robert Hansen

Artist Statement

My art springs from a passion for the color I see in nature, the man-made environment and in my imagination. Travel in India; Iceland, Arizona, and Bucks County have all inspired my recent work. My painting starts with a color pallet, rarely from a narrative. Composition evolves in my choices of how to allocate space and in combining and grouping colors. I love the way hot and cool colors interact. I love opposites, but I also love contiguous colors on the wheel as well as the tints and shades of all of these. I like to create transparency and light shinning through the paint. I like to mix and merge pigments creating colors new to me and to others. I often reveal layers of paint suggesting the path my creative process has taken. Accident is an important ingredient my work. When people ask me what is the meaning of a painting, I tell them it is the pleasure, surprise, excitement, peace, mystery, or awe of color and light that I experience and want to share.

Robert Hansen, 2014