Two Ways of Exploring Nature: Gaylen Hansen and Alan Lau

A painting of a giant grasshopper standing on a rock invites us into the Woodside Braseth Gallery for an exhibition of Gaylen Hansen, age 104.

As we enter the gallery we see a swarm of bright blue fish with intense red eyes, mouths open and teeth bared. Turning to the right we see a red wall with irregular bricks and large grasshoppers climbing on it. But the painting is titled “Red Wall Two Ducks.” I asked the gallery owner where the ducks were and he said, “Behind the wall.” Hansen’s sense of humor!

There is one painting with Gaylen’s alter ego Kernal, the only black and white work. A swarm of ducks fill the sky behind the Kernal who is paddling a striped canoe with a dog in the bow. Fish leap up for the birds across the bottom of the painting.

Other topics in the exhibition (and trademarks in much of his earlier work) include huge tulips, a swarm of bees that fills an entire canvas, and a dense pack of wolves. A closeup of a bear’s face peers at us rather agreeably.

Hansen was a professor at Washington State University for many years. After he retired, he lived in Palouse, a small town nearby. He had plenty of opportunities to experience the scenes that he depicts, but he never settles for “scenery.” The huge scale of the wildlife and small scale of his figure suggests his respect for these creatures as well as his sense of humor.

He moved to Whidbey Island in 2014. It was a radical change of environment. The Palouse is a wide-open horizontal landscape while Whidbey Island is filled with tall closely packed trees. A loosely painted image of a bear in the forest from 2021, suggests that bears are still running through his life, but now they are taking second place to the forest.

Hansen grew up on his grandfather’s farm immersed in geese, goats, chickens, cattle, pigs, and ducks many of which are the subject of his paintings. He rode horses and did heavy farm labor from the age of nine. Such a childhood must be the foundation for his incredible longevity.

The paintings of the 1980s are characterized by intense confrontations of different species and humans (mostly the Kernal). But in later work like Dog and Many Ducks of 2012 there is no human present. The dog faces many ducks who seem to all be squawking at him. He is obviously outnumbered and daunted.

Another format is the still life composition, which juxtaposes, for example, a large glove and a magpie. Hansen loves to experiment with scale and here the glove and magpie are the same size. Another painting is only one large glove. In another, a red fish fills the canvas. We can see here the formal strengths of the artist as he takes a familiar object and transforms it into an imposing shape.

Hansen is a phenomenal painter. His colors, his compositions, his brushstrokes dazzle. Close looking reveals the complexity of his painting. Wandering through these brightly colored paintings of so many creatures, most of them hugely enlarged, immerses us in Hansen’s fantasy world. Be sure to see this show.

Alan Lau at ArtX Contemporary Gallery focuses on nature in an entirely different way. “Walks Along the Kamogawa: The Kyoto Series Part I” gives us lyrical paintings in sumi, watercolor and pastel on rice paper that evoke hanging vines and swirling waters, sometimes birds (tracing migration patterns of small birds) and animals (when the zebra lost her spots). They suggest different temperatures as in arctic ledge in cool grays and green impression—a walk in the garden with soft greens. “that day by the sea” suggests the movement of water. “In the peach orchard” and “trapped within my garden of longing (in memory of peach blossom spring)” are entirely different in stroke, texture and color although they both reference peach blossoms. The titles, all written in lower case by the artist, suggest a poetic enchantment in themselves.

We can imagine the artist in Kyoto in his “make shift studio in my in-laws’ house…the only room in the house where the sun filters in. Below I see the tiny garden with a lone persimmon tree with orange bursts of fruit and a spindly Japanese tree blushing with red and yellow leaves.”

That quote is from his recent book This Single Road. There will be a book launch at the Gallery on Saturday, November 1 at 2pm: “This Single Road: Postcards and Notebooks from Kyoto.” Alan will read selected passages from his new book, accompanied by a soundscape performance by Susie Kozawa. This event is free and open to the public.

Both exhibitions close on November 15:

ArtX Contemporary 512 First Ave S Tues – Sat 11-5

Woodside Braseth 1202 Western Ave, Tues – Sat 11-6

~Susan Platt