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Gaylen Hansen

About Gaylen Hansen

Gaylen Hansen creates expressive figurative paintings and drawings.  He has been transforming the gentle landscape of the Palouse into tall tales and mythical quests through narrative painting for the last forty years. Using landscapes, animals, insects, and his alter ego, “the Kernal”, Hansen depicts a world that is “variously mysterious, dangerous, surprising and comical”. His amplified narratives are informed by his childhood in rural Utah, growing up in an adult world of farming and breaking horses and by his keen observations as an intuitive naturalist.

Born in Garland, Utah, Hansen received his Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles in 1953 and taught art at Washington State University in Pullman, Eastern Washington. He was honored with a Washington State Governor’s Arts and Heritage Award in 1989/90.