Today we’d like to introduce you to Erin Hanson

Hi Erin, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?

My name is Erin Hanson. I have been painting in oils since I was eight years old. The thing that drives me to pick up my brush every day, the thing that drives me to paint is COLOR.

When I was a teenager, I worked in a mural studio. The first job I had was color matching for the other artists. We had about a hundred gallons of acrylic paint spread out across the warehouse floor. The main artist would walk between these hundred gallons of paint holding a few Dixie cups and he would go around mixing and dabbing together a set of colors. He would then hand the Dixie cups to me, and my job was to make an entire gallon of each color and the colors had to match exactly.

I’ve spent over 10,000 hours just mixing paint and this has given me a lot of opportunities to explore what color can do.

Now I can color match anything. I can color match any photograph, any paint color or fabric swatch – any object. I spend an hour or two every day mixing color for my paintings. In fact, color is such an important part of how I compose my paintings that I premix my entire palette before I ever pick up a brush to begin painting.

When I paint, I try to create the most pure, lifelike, vibrant colors I can and the best way to do that is by using a limited palette. Using a limited palette means I only use five pure pigments when I paint. And, at first it was a huge challenge restricting my palette to only five colors because you think, “I have fewer colors to work with so how am I going to create the variety of color that I need in a painting?” But, over the years, I have really learned that having fewer pigments gives me as an artist the freedom to create a wider variety of colors without the colors getting muddy.

So, I have a lot more control over the colors that I am creating.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?

When I was younger I was told, as most aspiring artists are, that it is too hard to make a living as an artist. In my opinion, it is quite easy to sell paintings and make a living, but you have to be willing to work hard (60-80 hours a week is very common) and learn how to market yourself. Being able to create amazing paintings is only half the battle, then you have to be able to get your paintings in front of people so they can see them!

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?

Composition is the most important aspect of my paintings. Composition is the structure of how I will communicate my message in my painting; it is how I tell my story. My message might be, “look at how red those cliffs are compared to the rest of the landscape!” or “look at how the lake creates a perfect reflection of the trees,” or “look at how pink those cherry blossoms look against a blue sky,” or “look at how the light coming through the clouds only illuminates that one mountain peak,” for example. Composition guides all my decisions during a painting: what areas should be light or dark, when to use detail versus when to apply wide brush strokes, when to create atmosphere and distance with value changes, and how to control eye movement throughout the painting.

Color is one of the ways I use composition to communicate my message, my story. I’ll give you an example. I was backpacking in Zion National Park on a gray, overcast day. I had attempted to time my backpacking trip to catch all the brilliant fall color of southern Utah, but an early cold spell made all the trees drop their leaves. On day 4 of my trip, I was hiking through a grove of barren aspen trees, and I was struck suddenly by the beauty of their white trunks, so white and so brilliant against the bright orange and yellow fallen leaves, wet and saturated with color from the rain. I saw the landscape in two main color blocks: the white of the tree trunks and the gray of the sky against the brilliant cadmium hues of the wet leaves on the ground.

When I got home, I wanted to capture this story in a painting. I chose my colors based on what I was trying to communicate: how white the trees were, how gray the sky was, and how colorful the fallen leaves were by contrast. You can see how I chose colors in the painting below, to make the most effective communication possible. The result is one of my favorite paintings I created from that 5-day backpacking trip.

Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?

During a lifetime of exploring the outdoors, it seems that the most exciting times are also the most dangerous. The sudden pump of adrenaline you get when you have to act quickly to remain alive makes you feel great, like you are fighting for survival and winning!

About fifteen years ago, I was antsy for adventure. Camping in the Cleveland National forest in Orange County seemed too tame, so I decided I would park at a trailhead, backpack for two days, and arrive in the campground at the end of the second day. I had my topo maps, my GPS unit, and my cell phone. What could go wrong?

The trail started out in a strange compound or retreat that looked like it dated from the turn of the century. Handmade huts and benches lurked among the trees by the dozen. The entire compound was deserted, although there were strange markings in the ground and stone piles that I avoided. Strictly speaking, I was trespassing, since I did not have a backcountry pass, but the map clearly stated that the trailhead was just past the compound. Luckily, not a whisper of a sound confronted me, and I gratefully found the trailhead without much trouble, although not without a sense of creepy foreboding.

The trail started off cheerily enough, bright dappled sunlight sparkling through the trees, a bubbling brook chattering and laughing to one side of the trail. I rather started skipping along the trail, clambering over a boulder or two that got in they way, and quite glad to be outdoors.

As the day drew on, the trail seemed to be confused about which side of the stream it was supposed to be on. Luckily the stream was narrow and I could cross it with minimum dampness. Finally, as late afternoon hit, I ran smack into an impassable rock waterfall. Spiky, unfriendly trees and poison oak loomed on either side of the rocks, and the waterfall itself was slippery and unsafe. I attempted to climb it, but ended up having to turn back. Still feeling optimistic, I decided I would just skirt around the waterfall and re-join the stream in a little while. The valley I was in was maybe a 1/4-mile wide, and it seemed impossible to get lost.

I never found the stream. All I could find after I circled around was a wide bed of stones, very dry stones, without a trace of water. The day had rather abruptly ended, and it must have taken me longer to circle around than I had thought. It was already getting dark, and I knew I would have to call it a night. I set up camp right along the dry creek bed, so I wouldn’t lose my way in the morning, and had a rather unsettled night sleep on the rocky ground.

When the sun came up, I could see that I was in a wide valley floor. My compass and senses told me that I needed to follow the canyon north and it would run right into the distant campground, about five miles away. My topo maps agreed with me, although my GPS unit seemed to be DOS-based and was very unhelpful. So I started hiking.

By noon, the canyon had narrowed steeply, and I was surrounded on all sides by thick, dense manzanita. Someone had once told me that this mountain range had much denser scrub than the San Gabriels, where I was used to hiking, but I had laughed it off. I wasn’t laughing now. Stubborn and committed to making it to this campground, and afraid I would get lost if I turned back, I kept doggedly on up the narrowing canyon. The wide stony creek bed, which earlier had stretched on either side of me like a rock quarry, was now about twelve inches wide and only recognizable by the occasional rounded stone. The unyielding manzanita pressed me lower and lower to the ground, until I was quite literally pulling myself forward on my hands and knees. All the camping goods I had tied to my pack were ripped off by the sharp trees as I forced myself through the brush, flat on my stomach, for the next few hours. Occasionally I could just make out little clearings to either side of me, luring me to them like the lights in Mirkwood, but I was terrified that if I left my tiny creekbed I would lose my way.

Once, in the afternoon, I managed to find a spot over my creekbed that had enough room for me to sit up in. I gratefully took off my pack and ate some food. And then I realized, to my sudden horror, I had no idea which way I had come. I could not remember if I had rotated right or left to sit up, and all I could see was identical looming brush on either side of me. The sky was completely obscured, and I couldn’t even tell which direction the sun was coming from. After a few minutes of panic, I decided my odds were as good as a coin toss for going in the right directly, and I got back on my stomach to crawl once again into the brush.

I hadn’t crawled for more than ten yards, when I saw clear evidence of dragging footprints in the ground in front of me, leading back to where I had ate. So, clearly I had gone the wrong way. No worries, I would just turn around and go the other direction. After awkwardly turning around, I went back the way I came, passed the little opening in the trees where I had ate, and continued crawling. Once again, about ten yards later, I saw tracks in the sand in front of me, clear evidence again that I had traveled this route before, going in the opposite direction. I turned around again, retraced my steps, trying to get past the obscured marks and into un-marked sand. I crawled for ten minutes. And again saw the tracks leading towards me. I had already been there.

I will be honest with you. Up to this point, I was still pretty much my optimistic self, not doubting that I could get myself out of any trouble I would run in to. But at this moment, after crawling for hours and hours on my hands and knees, scratched, confused, and thoroughly daunted by these contradictory tracks, I panicked. I believe this is the only time in my life I went hysterical. I yelled and I shouted, I cried, I gave up all hope of ever escaping this nightmare land of manzanitas.

Nothing, however, lasts forever. I finally dried my eyes and decided all I needed to do was climb up the slope of the canyon, get to the top of this mountain, and I would be able to see where I was! I then proceeded to spend the next four hours trying to push my way through the bramble and up the slope. I no longer tried to follow the creekbed; my only objective was to attain the top of the mountain at any cost and so get a good view of my surroundings. Time and time again I would make it fifty feet up the canyonside, only to be brutally halted by impassable manzanita. This was not at all the manzanita I had grown up around: little scraggly trees that could be crushed with a boot heel. These were monster manzanita, their trunks as thick as my waist, their branches hard and gnarled.

When at last I made it to a small clearing at the side of the mountain, near the top, it was late afternoon, and the sun was dipping towards the horizon. Standing up there, looking over the miles and miles of homogeneous brown scrub surrounding me, I realized there was no way to confront going back into that manzanita maze. There were no trails around me, no clearings as far as I could see in the surrounding mountains, not a hint of human life. There was only one ray of hope – I had one bar of battery life left on my cell phone, as well as some intermittent reception from the height I had gained. So I called the one person who knew where I was, and told him to call the ranger and send a rescue mission. The park department soon called me directly, and I managed to glean from my GPS unit what my exact numerical location was. They told me they were sending men on horseback and helicopters directly.

And so I waited on my lonely mountainside, picturing gallant men on mighty steeds coming to rescue me. About an hour passed. The sun was nearing the horizon. I had spread my tarp across the nearby bushes so I would be more visible. Then, far in the distance, circling a mountain peak about 10 miles away, I saw a helicopter! It circled the mountain a few times, then widened its circle, crossing over and over again that distant spot. For almost an hour the helicopter flew around, with me waving and flapping my tarp, but I was miles too far away to be seen. With my last battery juice, and a sudden inspiration, I called the ranger back, and asked what GPS location they were looking for. They were off by one digit.

Soon afterwards, I heard the chest-thumping beat of a helicopter overhead. Minutes later there were shouts as two men came running down the mountain and helped me up into the helicopter. As the helicopter took off, I could see, through the last rays of the setting sun, just over the peak I had nearly climbed up, the smoothly reflective asphalt of a paved road, and, not fifty yards away, the open clearing of the campground I had tried to hike to.

While I quickly recovered from being lost, my embarrassment still lives to this day that I had to get rescued by a helicopter within a stone’s throw away from concrete and civilization.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.erinhanson.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/erinhansonartist
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheErinHansonGallery
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB_RY4a5MxsPhsdTw85c0kg

Image Credits

All images are courtesy of The Erin Hanson Gallery