Art of the female form

A room full of people, sitting, standing, watching and waiting. This tableau describes the scene at the ongoing exhibition, APEX: Robert Hanson, at the Portland Art Museum, which opened Jan. 7. The exhibition is part of the museum’s APEX series, which features artists based in the Pacific Northwest.

The exhibition consists of 37 pieces by artist Robert Hanson, all of which are sparse drawings of female models. They are small by museum standards, measuring 12-by-9 inches, and are very simple.

“They’re individual, accurate drawings of people he was looking at from direct observation at a given moment in time. Some of them are just pencil lines,” said Bonnie Laing-Malcolmson, the Arlene and Harold Schnitzer curator of Northwest art and the curator of the Hanson exhibition.

Tragically, Hanson was not able to see his latest exhibition. He died from cancer Dec. 16, 2011.

“I was really glad that he knew he had a museum show at the end of his life, and he was excited about it,” Laing-Malcolmson said.

She believes that each of the pieces captures something essential about the subject.

“They have such a sense of humanity in them,” she said. “They’re simple, and yet they seem exquisitely real to me.”

Lucinda Parker taught with Hanson at the Pacific Northwest College of Art.

“The drawings are very open with a lot of air in them. You don’t see obvious structure, but you can see where the structure is even though he hasn’t drawn it. You know he knows where it is,” Parker said.

Laing-Malcolmson explained that Hanson started his drawings by making just a few marks on paper, then connecting them.

“He uses the color randomly. Sometimes it makes sense and sometimes it doesn’t. An ear will be blue, or an eyebrow will be orange, and the other green. He just does what the drawing needs,” she said.

Hanson was represented by the Elizabeth Leach Gallery in the Pearl District. Daniel Peabody, the gallery director, knew Hanson well.

“His work is almost minimalist,” Peabody said. “He did the bare minimum in order to capture the personality.”

Hanson was well respected in the art community, both as an artist and a person.

“He was very intelligent, focused and had a dry sense of humor. You couldn’t dislodge him from what he was thinking about or doing. And he really understood all the problems of drawing,” Parker said. “He was a person who did an exploration of the structure of what he was looking at. He wasn’t interested in the prettiness.”

Hanson used to draw in small sketchbooks for three hours at a time. He drew female clothed models, usually using the same few models with whom he was already familiar.

Laing-Malcolmson praised his dedication to drawing.

“The art world is full of people making giant gestures now,” she said. “To see someone who is brave enough just to do what they truly love, which is drawing and holding the drawing in their hand, is kind of remarkable.”

George Johanson, another colleague from PNCA, also spoke about Hanson’s focus on drawing.

“There are not a lot of people that are really devoted to drawing the way he was,” Johanson said. “He did a lot of self-portraits, which were very simplified and brought out the essence of the form and a kind of psychology in the drawings that I think is very penetrating.”

The exhibition brochure features Harrison’s reflections on his art.

“There is only one thing that counts in the long run: you have to abandon yourself to your work,” He said. “You have to give yourself over entirely without thoughts, especially without afterthoughts. Only then does your work contain you totally.”

Laing-Malcolmson met Hanson when they worked together at PNCA, where he taught for 24 years. She was the director of Academic Affairs and Admissions for seven years.

“I would often give students tours of the college, and I’d go through and see him teaching,” Laing-Malcolmson said. “He was just a really wonderful teacher.”

Hanson used some interesting teaching techniques, according to Parker.

“He used to ask the students to get up so he could sit at their desk. He wouldn’t criticize a student until he saw it through their eyes, because when you stand above them you can’t see what they’re seeing,” she said. “He would make a little drawing on the corner of their page, explaining visually what he was trying to tell the student.”

What Laing-Malcolmson appreciated the most about Hanson’s drawings was their honesty.

“I think they really express something about the way people really are, and about how an artist and a man can appreciate a woman for her mind and her natural beauty,” she said. “These women aren’t all women that you’d look at and immediately think they’re beautiful, but you can tell that they are, because they’re so real.”