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Vibrant Landscape Paintings Use the Color Orange to Capture the Warm Glow of the American West

Artist Erin Hanson is known for expressing her love of the outdoors through vibrant landscape paintings. Using her contemporary technique of Open-Impressionism (a unique blend of Impressionism and Expressionism), she allows un-muddled hues and thick, energetic brushstrokes to showcase the grandiose beauty of locales like the National Parks. Continuing with this nature-driven theme, she’s recently produced paintings that focus on the color orange.

“I am always looking for ways to push myself artistically and challenge the way I think about color and composition,” she writes. “I came up with the idea of focusing on a single color for a whole collection as a way to really delve into the boundaries of ‘orange’ and explore how this color can be used in different landscapes to create an emotional impact.”

Orange cloaks the American West in both high and low ground. From towering mountainscapes to fall foliage to the base of rolling hills, this warm glow symbolizes the passage of time—the rising and setting sun as well as the changing seasons. Hanson’s meditation on orange demonstrates how it seeps into our lives so inconspicuously that we might not notice it, but her paintings are a beautiful reminder of its presence.

These new works are part of Hanson’s aptly-titled exhibition, The Orange Show. Set against midnight-blue walls, the pieces will be displayed at The Erin Hanson Gallery in Los Angeles from October 1 to October 28, 2016.

Erin Hanson: Website | Facebook | Instagram

My Modern Met granted permission to use photos by Erin Hanson.

Sara Barnes

Sara Barnes is a Staff Editor at My Modern Met, Manager of My Modern Met Store, and co-host of the My Modern Met Top Artist Podcast. As an illustrator and writer living in Seattle, she chronicles illustration, embroidery, and beyond through her blog Brown Paper Bag and Instagram @brwnpaperbag. She wrote a book about embroidery artist Sarah K. Benning titled 'Embroidered Life' that was published by Chronicle Books in 2019. Sara is a graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art. She earned her BFA in Illustration in 2008 and MFA in Illustration Practice in 2013.
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