Erin Hanson

Erin Hanson, born in 1981, is an American painter working in the contemporary art world, best known for a style she calls Open Impressionism. Her work is characterized by minimal brush strokes and thick, impasto paint, often used to capture the natural beauty of the United States and the American West. Rather than building an image through many small marks, Hanson typically works with broad strokes, a limited palette of four or five colors, and an alla prima method, applying wet paint onto wet paint without waiting for earlier layers to dry.

Hanson’s training began early. As a child, she studied oils, watercolor, pen and ink, pastels, and life drawing with art instructors. By age 10, she was commissioning portraits of her neighbor’s pets. By age 12, she was working after school for a mural studio, where she learned acrylic techniques on 40-foot canvases. She has said that seeing Vincent van Gogh’s Irises in elementary school was decisive, beginning her appreciation for Impressionism. A high school scholarship later took her to Otis College of Art and Design, where she focused on figure drawing.

After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, Hanson moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, and began an import business. Her hobbies, especially rock climbing and hiking, brought her back to painting. The landscapes she encountered outdoors became central to her art. She has been inspired by Red Rock Canyon near Las Vegas and the Mojave Desert in Southern California, and her paintings have included places such as Paso Robles, Joshua Tree National Park, and the Anza-Borrego Desert.

Her working process reflects that close contact with the land. Hanson has said she takes dozens of reference photos during trips, then uses them later in the studio before painting. Her frequent time in National Parks and other natural places has included backpacking expeditions, rock climbing, and photo safaris. The result is a body of work tied closely to color, terrain, and movement, with the American West appearing not as a distant subject but as something repeatedly observed in person.

Hanson’s paintings have been shown in fine art galleries and museums including the St. George Art Museum, La Salle University Art Museum, Mattatuck Art Museum, and Bone Creek Museum of Agrarian Art. In 2019, her painting Desert in Color won Best of Show at the Cowgirl Up! art show in Wickenburg, Arizona, an exhibition featuring top women artists from across the nation. In 2022, she was also among several professional artists who learned their technique had been included without permission in a data set used to train a text-to-image AI program.

For a quotes audience, Hanson’s words meet the same directness found in her painting. “People aren't against you; they're for themselves” is plain, unsentimental, and observant. It fits an artist whose public work is shaped by looking closely, whether at a desert canyon, a brushstroke, or the way people move through the world.