Formerly of the San Francisco Bay Area and Saratoga Springs, New York, watercolorist, Patricia Hansen currently lives and maintains her studio at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon in Sandy, Utah. She was born in Chicago, Illinois and received her bachelor degree in art from Brigham Young University. After graduation, Patricia continued to study both drawing and watercolor painting from noted artists Jade Fon, Millard Sheets, Robert E. Wood, Tom Nicolas, Jason Tao, and Ethel Gruttman. She also studied design and composition with Marie MacDonnall Roberts.
Hansen has been awarded Full Signature Membership into the National Watercolor Society, the Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Arts Club and the Transparent Watercolor Society of America. She has won many regional and national awards, notably the National Watercolor Society’s “Purchase Award,” the highest award given by the NWS. Her works are held in private and corporate collections (KPMG and Jardine Matheson in USA, Canada, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zeland and England) and are published in Splash 4, The Splendor of Light, Evergreen, a Guide to Creative Writing, Transparent Watercolor Wheel, The Artist’s Design: Probing the Hidden Order, and the “Artists Magazine.”
Patricia works in transparent watercolor in a traditional style using nontraditional techniques. With layering and pushing color to the fullest of saturation, she is able to create tableaux in watercolor that are as vivid as oils. Her paintings emphasize strength in design and composition and have a decorative quality. She creates visual texture in her subject matter—interiors rich with the multiple patterns found in Persian rugs, chair cushions and wallpaper. The viewer is stimulated by figures of women among antique furnishings, bold colors, and patterns of light. Over the years Patricia’s style has evolved into what critics have labeled, ”Contemporary Nabis.”
She has had successful shows of her artwork on both the East and West Coasts. Her most noted show was “Intimate Spaces,” in 2001 at the Triton Museum of Art in Santa Clara, California. A show in Washington, D.C. was a benefit for Cystic Fibrous. When she lived in Saratoga Springs she was a featured artist for Agriculture in Cambridge, New York. She has been showing her work at Artexpo New York since 2005.