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 Maine and Bucks County, PA 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 layers of paint. I like to mix and merge pigments creating colors new to me and to others. I often reveal layers of paint from previous works suggesting the path my creative process has taken. Accident is an important ingredient in 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, 2026