Studio Visit with Brit Hansen
Originally recorded February 15, 2022.
George Irwin of Western Gallery visits with Brit Hansen, whose work centers on carved paint and who is based in Outside Winslow, Arizona, for a wide-ranging conversation about the artist’s work, process, and studio practice.
Transcript note: Speaker labels were assigned from the source audio where available and dialogue context otherwise. Paragraph breaks were added for readability, and verbal filler was lightly edited. Joint labels mark rapid or overlapping exchanges. This was prepared from an automated transcription, so minor transcription errors may remain.
Instagram Live studio visit—February 15, 2022
Watch the original video on Instagram (33:00)
Participants: George Irwin and Brit Hansen
George Irwin: Hello out there! It's time for another Instagram Live studio visit with our featured artist in the Impermanent Collection on western.gallery, Brit Hansen. Brit is a really unique artist based outside of Winslow, Arizona in a little town where she lives with her husband and kids, and she carves paint. If that sounds interesting to you, it is. It's... She can tell you more about our process. We're gonna chat here in just a minute. And, but I, it's just such a cool technique and she makes some really wonderful pieces using this technique that she discovered and has kind of perfected. So I'm gonna see if I can invite Brit to do the ground or space maybe, where she does the work. Hey, Brit.
Brit Hansen: Hey!
George Irwin: How's it going?
Brit Hansen: Good.
George Irwin: Good. Happy day after Valentine's Day to you, Mike, and the crew. Thanks, you too. Well, I see you got some of the pieces up there behind you.
Brit Hansen: Yep, this is like my little gallery shelf where once a piece is finished I get to put it up there and enjoy it for a little while.
George Irwin: Awesome! Very cool. Yeah so about half of them went out the door yesterday which is exciting.
Brit Hansen: One more coming out today.
George Irwin: Yeah so hopefully you got some more space you can work in again.
Brit Hansen: I never have enough space.
George Irwin: All right, so you're so you work kind of like just this is like it's just like a corner of your house.
Brit Hansen: So it's a room in my house, the small room. So only like 10 by 11 and so I'll kind of just swivel this around and show you and I have a gigantic printer in here too. So we print on canvas like reproductions for me and we bought it originally from my husband because he's a photographer but we have this huge 44 inch printer in
George Irwin / Brit Hansen: here that takes up so much space. Wow, yeah. So cool I didn't think maybe yeah awesome. Oh you got your flat storage and... Yeah once I have a piece layered up then it
Brit Hansen: goes in here waiting to be carved. Gotcha. And just tons more like credenza storage. It's just a very, very cluttered small crammed space. We're in the process of building a studio right now. And fantastic. I'll be into it this year and then I don't even know what I'm gonna do because it's huge.
George Irwin: You could move into like installation carving. What I really want to do is I want to be carving.
Brit Hansen: I want to be carving doors. So that's like the thing I've wanted to do for years, but I just don't have the space for it. So my husband is carpentry and photography and I want... we've talked for years about how he... I want him to build me some doors and then I'm going to layer them and carve them.
George Irwin: Amazing! I can't wait to see that.
Brit Hansen: As soon as the studio is done.
George Irwin: Yeah, that's fantastic. And then yeah, just while we're talking about Mike as well, he He built all the frames for your pieces that are up right now.
Brit Hansen: Yeah, uh-huh. He put me through college as a carpenter. He does like finish very high end cabinetry and things so I'm very, very lucky to have him do my frames.
George Irwin: That's awesome! You know I've seen... It works... This is a strange observation I've been having but there are a couple other artists I think whose husbands are like, like there's a they're kind of a couple duo with like the wife being the art maker image maker and then the husband being like a carpenter. Yeah. A framework person it happens it happens more often than i would have thought. It does and I find
Brit Hansen: I find that a lot at art festivals too. I'll meet couples and I'll hear it over and over again he says I'm a carpenter, I do furniture or whatever and I make her frames.
George Irwin / Brit Hansen: Because she's an artist. It's a common duo! That's really interesting to recognize that.
George Irwin: Huh, well cool. Wow so where should we start? I think like you have, you know there's like some background on you went to school in Arizona and got your BFA. Yeah, I would do this on a state. And you went and then you started you became a photographer too. Then is that how you met Mike or did you guys work together? Or were you just both photography?
Brit Hansen: We got into photography together actually. So on our one year anniversary we went on a trip and kind of got into photography. And I was actually going to college for physics which is kind of crazy. And then I switched to photography. I loved it. And then, I discovered block printing while doing that. I had never even heard of it before like printmaking.
George Irwin: Just like across the studio or how did that come to you?
Brit Hansen: Just because I had to take so many electives for college. And one of the electives I chose was I was like, oh, try this. Let's see. And it was my very last semester of my degree. And, of course I loved it. I absolutely fell in love with it. And so I finished up my degree with photography but printmaking was my hobby. So I just did that and would carve all the time and make things here and there. Didn't take it very seriously. It was like my time off. And then when I then fast forward like, I think eight years or six years something like that. I was pregnant with my first, my daughter and I was put on bedrest really early at 20 weeks and I couldn't photograph, I couldn' t do anything it's just laying in bed and so brought out all my carving stuff again and would work on it and draw and I think for all those years even though I loved doing it I didn't feel like
Brit Hansen: I had any kind of style or real desire for a certain like thing I wanted to be creating. And during that time is when I developed that, I started to like really love to work with botanicals and Southwest styles and geometric shapes and, and just started having fun with it and having the time to just draw and sketch, and then it became something I didn't want to give up. So once I was you know, I pass all the newborn baby stuff Then I started taking my art seriously And then it was like I took time to be in We had a studio It was in a different house I had a Studio and I would work and I started applying for art festivals and got in and then
George Irwin / Brit Hansen: completely transferred from photography to printmaking. Wow that's cool. Once upon
George Irwin: a time I was talking to, I don't know if this is on the podcast or not but when I was talkin gee Von Lee we were talking about how you know he spent a long time doing photography before he started painting as well and just the ability to kind of iterate in color and composition so fast, you know using a camera as your vehicle. And then being able to see results so quick I think it really helps to develop an artist's sense of composition and all the kind of formal things that you want to be able to master in your work. So that's...
Brit Hansen: totally agree. Interesting, yeah. Yeah and I work off photos a lot so I love looking through or going and visiting different like arboretums and places and taking photos and then being able to compose
George Irwin: those into a carving. Mm-hmm yeah that's awesome. Cool well and then so you said you discovered sort of like you know wanting like liking to do botanicals in the desert and whatever kind kind of as you were discovering this process. This particular collection that you got with Western Gallery is focused kinda on spring and like the little window of flowers and whatnot in the desert.
Brit Hansen: Right, there's a very small window here but it is pretty amazing.
George Irwin: Yeah, is that something like, do you get extra inspired by that? I mean, I guess every year Or is it like a favorite season or what drew you to that?
Brit Hansen: Yeah, so I live in Northern Arizona. So I used to live in the Phoenix area,
George Irwin: which right now they're kind of going into spring.
Brit Hansen: So we're about to take trips down to Phoenix so that I can go study at like the Desert Botanical Garden, Boyce Thompson Arboretum. Those are my two feet. Oh cool. Everything just starts blooming there. drive down into the desert and the sides of the road and everywhere is just covered in wildflowers. Everything is blooming, the cactus, you know, saguaros have gigantic white blossoms on them and it only lasts until from like maybe end of February until April, mid-April. It's not very not very long and so this is the time when I do not want to miss it. I
George Irwin / Brit Hansen: have to go explore and find as much as I can. Awesome yeah that sounds like you
George Irwin: know, a little small timeframe to get really inspired for you know love to carry with you in your work for longer. Yeah we go to California
Brit Hansen: Yeah, and also go things last a lot longer there. They have like in the San Diego. I don't remember what it's called. It's over. It said Balboa Park they have a free big like Arboretum or that botanical garden there. And it's like an easy year round like if I happen to be in the area go check it out. Cool. I'm starting to do more
George Irwin / Brit Hansen: animals too. Definitely lens like... I think I just maybe just lost your audio
George Irwin: there. Oh wait, there you are. Sorry I lost your
George Irwin / Brit Hansen: audio for just a second but that's okay. Oh sorry um carving. You're saying carving lives itself? Yes yeah. Yeah with animals so I'm starting to draw up a lot
Brit Hansen: of like, I've done coyotes in the past I really like coyotes I'm now drawing up a lot of horses I mean feathers of course always any kind of bird and feathers um just all that texture it's just meant to be with carving. Yeah awesome
George Irwin: Yeah, I love the way that those Roadrunner feathers came out. It's just really cool. I'm curious to see some of your animal stuff then too in the future.
Brit Hansen: I'm layering up now so I'm always layering panels. Always.
George Irwin: So I saw like on your stack after you layer them up, how do you remember which one's which and what colors are where?
Brit Hansen: I could never forget it. I don't know. I don t need notes, I don d need- I don t know like I look at a board and then keep- You just know. I keep a list. Just so that I know like if I finish a piece and I just want to sit down and think okay
George Irwin: well what do I want to work on next? If I don
Brit Hansen: t already have something in my head these are all the pieces I have layered in my rack that I either have a drawing complete for or I I know the idea of what I'm doing, and I just need to pull it out and sketch it. But I could never forget, I don't know, it takes a month to make a panel. So in that time of making it and choosing my colors, and I use a lot of the same colors again and again, I like a very specific palette, I guess. So let me grab one so you can see from a lot rack.
George Irwin / Brit Hansen: Yeah. You can also... Yeah, I mean...
George Irwin: So you just spend so much time with it preparing that you know what's inside and what it's going to be?
Brit Hansen: Yeah, and you can see from the edge, you can still see it in there. So it's not like it's covered up. Like if it were completely green then maybe after a little while I would forget, but all I have to do is look at the edge. Then let's see, I've got these are the two pieces I'm working on right now.
George Irwin: Oh man yeah I've seen you post like little sections of that piece with the daisies on it.
Brit Hansen: Yeah they're chamomile very about the same. But I'm gonna finish it today.
George Irwin: Alright. Wow. Yeah it's so hard to tell like on the Instagram live, it's really hard to see the detail in that but yeah all the texture in it. It takes about a
George Irwin / Brit Hansen: half hour to carve one flower. Man where do you find the time being a mother? My
Brit Hansen: husband's amazing. We decided a long time ago that if we're gonna make this work then I needed to treat it like the full-time job so I do I get to work as soon as my daughter goes to kindergarten, I get straight to work and I call it quits at about five o'clock and just try to treat it every day like okay I'm going to work. And I put on noise cancelling headphones and that's it.
George Irwin: No, that's what we got to do. So you are, I also saw your fourth generation artist, which is another theme I'm discovering among a lot of artists is that it runs in the family. Can you tell me a little bit about what your family, you know, your artist lineages and how that has affected your decision to go into the arts.
Brit Hansen: Yeah my great grandmother is a ceramicist and my grandmother did ceramics and painting. My dad is a jeweler and he did art shows and everything too when I was growing up. So it was very like, his studio was attached to our house and he had wholesale work and he had done his homework and we traveled and did shows. So I never imagined that's what I would do. It wasn't something I grew up in thought like oh, I'm just kind of you know, I know
George Irwin: how this works. I'm gonna follow that path. It just made it so much easier once
Brit Hansen: I decided that I wanted to make art, then I was like oh this isn't like something completely foreign and so I just wasn't scared of it. That's awesome
George Irwin: yeah like you just kind of knew that it's a... I mean I guess at the very base level you know you knew base level, you knew it was like something
Brit Hansen: you could do if you would. Right, and I think that's the biggest difference between people
George Irwin: who make art for a living and don't honestly. It's so scary for so many people like how do you make a living doing art? Like how do you just take that leap? And I'm very fortunate
Brit Hansen: coming from a background that it didn't seem like an impossibility. It was like oh It's work, like you make the work and market. I mean it's a lot of work.
George Irwin: You have to love it yeah. Yeah that's cool. One of the things I thought was interesting, Hurry I think is interesting about what you're doing is kind of along the business side of things is now that you've gotten your process So kind of like nailed down, you've been offering carving kits. Sometimes can you tell us a little bit about what those carving kits are and kinda like some of the feedback you might have gotten about them?
Brit Hansen: Sure so I get messages every single day
George Irwin: from other artists asking how are you doing this? What is this?
Brit Hansen: And so after so long I developed a kit
George Irwin: where I layer, I'll grab one.
Brit Hansen: Oh cool. Here it is completed. It's just a six by six. Okay so that's the... this is the finished result. Cool. So in the kit you get it already layered and unfinished. Oh wow! And then there's like a link to a YouTube video, all the tools you need, a practice, a practice like rubber board to try on to practice before you. The first cut into the paint is a little intimidating. Yeah I'm sure. It's been really fun. I've sold a lot of them and it's made it so that the process is becoming, I don't a little more familiar. There's other, I'm finding more and more paint carvers. It's definitely like if I still recommend like if you want to try carving, try on linoleum first because that's... you can right away just get into carving it and go the store and buy it and know if you like it or not. Paint, even And if you love carving paint, making the panels is quite a commitment.
Brit Hansen: If I could go to a store and just that's probably one of the main questions I get where do you
George Irwin: buy your panels? Like who sells painted panels?
Brit Hansen: And like no one sells painted panel so you have to paint them.
George Irwin: Yeah, you have paint them!
Brit Hansen: So Larry, I have gallons and gallons of paint in my house. I think I have about 40 gallons of paint in my pantry. Because a single, just even this little tiny six by six takes almost a quart of paint.
George Irwin: That's wild. It's amazing. Huh. What is... So okay. I'm going to do like a hard switch here and one of the things that I saw... I could talk to you longer about carving. Like, I love like something is so gratifying about like taking that tool and just like scooping the linoleum out. I don't know why it's just like really... It just feels nice.
Brit Hansen: Yeah, it's like meditative and I can just lose time put on noise canceling headphones and carve all day. Like I draw very, very little on my boards because I don t want to waste time drawing. I just want to get in there with a tool and let the carving tool do the work.
George Irwin: That's cool, interesting. Yeah that seems like, yeah even now that I'm thinking about it more so than painting, it's almost like you're more connected to the work itself as its happening because it's
George Irwin / Brit Hansen: like just because it's like a 3D form sort of deal. Yeah, giving it texture and making
Brit Hansen: it come through the panel so that I thought that's the other question I get a lot. People think that I just paint it over and over again and then I just scratch it to give give it texture. Oh wow. Like no, I don't do that. It's just like full layers of paint.
George Irwin: Yeah. Okay so the thing I was gonna ask you about a little bit, I guess I have two kind of more questions I'm curious about in this. So you have on your website that you recognize I guess like kind of like the, I don't remember what exactly you said but my question for you is when did you realize that the power of art to transform a space?
Brit Hansen: Oh wow.
George Irwin / Brit Hansen: Forever.
Brit Hansen: That's like a part of me or something. Like growing up with artists. my mom also does stained glass. So, and they did art shows. And so at art shows you it's very common. Artists exchange work, you share work. And so our home was always covered in art and growing up even like being little artists would give me things. Things that I still have that I've put in my kids' rooms And it's about, it means so much more when you find something that you love, that somebody else loved and put care into compared to going to like TJ Maxx and picking up something. Whatever that... You know, you don't really have any kind of sentimental or that kind of connection too. It's just decor. you know, I think art functions as decor, but it's so much deeper than that.
George Irwin: Oh yeah, yeah I agree. I think you put that really nicely. So having that kind of like innate understanding of how art can impact a space and how you have this relationship with it. How does that figure into kind of like your choice of subject?
Brit Hansen: I love creating pieces that feel calm and peaceful. Um, I don't feel like it's something that I have to work out. You know, where it just happens. Like I can't help it. I know that a composition or something works for me if I just look at it and I say, oh, that's just simple enough. Like it still has detail to it and it still the composition and some kind of complexity but I really want to make sure that it has simple clean lines, fluid lines so that when it isn't the space that's gonna live in, it brings that same sense of peace and calm and it's calming to look at.
George Irwin: Yeah, cool. That's one of the things that I love about a lot of Western landscape work, I think. Because for some reason it just kind of makes me feel a little more, what do you call them? Peaceful, I don't know why.
Brit Hansen: That's how it is in the West, like the wide open spaces and the quiet. I think the first time I went to the South that is what hit me the hardest getting out of the car. I think I was in Florida or South Carolina and all the cicadas just being like, Oh, it's loud. It's really loud. And it's never allowed in the west. Like interesting.
George Irwin: It's so quiet. Yeah, huh. Yeah I mean I can imagine like yeah the wind sounds different and different like trees and vegetation and stuff but yeah I guess
George Irwin / Brit Hansen: most of the time it was pretty quiet. We have family that moved here from South
Brit Hansen: Carolina they grew up there and moved here and they said that they felt like the sky was falling because there's no trees like they're like it's just this panic feeling because it's just too open and how different that is of your experience of where you grow up. Because for me going somewhere where there are
George Irwin: trees I love it but how do you not see for miles like all over the place?
Brit Hansen: Because that's what I used to, like I can look out my window right now and I can see for... I don't even know how many miles five miles out like we just kind
George Irwin: open space out there in the front door. Oh wow, that's awesome. That's great. So yeah, you guys live like in a kind of... You live in a pretty tiny spot right? Very tiny
George Irwin / Brit Hansen: town. How far is it to like the closest grocery store? The grocery store is 10 miles away.
Brit Hansen: Okay, off the floor. So I have to drive on the on the interstate for 10 miles or 8 miles something like that to get to the grocery store And we have like three businesses in our town There's like a post office a diner and an auto shop I'm totally a city girl I've always lived in, well, I grew up in rural Arizona. So I did grow up out in this area. But then after going to college, I stayed in the city for 10 years living in Phoenix and Salt Lake City. And then after having our kids, it just felt like oh we have to live in the country. Like that's just the best way to grow up. So we bought three acres and built our house. And now we're building the studio, and our kids get to run... we live off a dirt road, and are kids run down the dirt road to their cousin's house which is just like down the road.
George Irwin: Oh that's amazing! That's cool. Well cool! All right. I think that I'm mostly out of questions for you now, Brit. Do you have anything else that you'd like to, you know, mention before we go? I know, you're working on new stuff, you are going to be in Dallas in April and elsewhere kind of throughout the year at some different festivals. What else is
Brit Hansen: coming up? So I have my first show is in Tempe, Arizona, the end of March and then I go straight to Dallas after that and I Just found out that I'm going to Columbus, Ohio so that is my furthest show I've ever done but I'm excited to go out there and Then I'm just kind of waiting everything right now is I'm making work This is really my like production time which I really love. I just wake up and I carve every day, and I'm just making work and trying to layer up panels. And that's about it.
George Irwin: Yeah, cool. All right so I do have another question now about like going to your different vestibules. Does the whole family travel together? That's amazing.
Brit Hansen: So that was something that was really important to me, both of us. that I didn't want it to be something where I just disappeared every summer, which would just fine. I know a lot of people do it that way but I grew up going to shows with my dad and I bet it was crazy for them because I know it's totally crazy for us taking our kids along but I love it we always rent like an Airbnb and try to do fun things while we're in a new city and give them, even though we live in this teeny tiny town, I want them to experience other places. So yeah I don't want to leave them here while I go off to work somewhere else. I want us to travel together and for them to get to experience all these cool cities all over the country. That's really cool.
George Irwin: Um so I don t remember like are your kids school age?
Brit Hansen: Sora, my oldest is in kindergarten. She's five and my youngest Levi is three. So he's not in school yet and we're very lucky that our principal for Sora's school is amazing and very open to us having to take her out of school a lot for traveling. He said that he would rather her experience the world than be you know, in the classroom. So we work really closely with the school so let them know like okay here's my travel dates and take homework with us.
George Irwin: Oh that's great. Yeah that's always been kind of like the thing that you know it's... that seems really difficult to travel a lot with your kids when you know when they're school age like that is like how do they how do you do like balance, like having a good school versus getting them out to see the world or do you have to homeschool them and then that takes away like a lot of time that you can be working. And it
George Irwin / Brit Hansen: seems like a really hard balance right? And it is still a struggle I mean it's not like
Brit Hansen: it's something that we feel like we've totally figured out. We'll still talk about it and and be like, oh are we doing the right thing? But I know you're a parent. It's always there's never like a clear cut
George Irwin / Brit Hansen: like this is the answer it's never blocked in life.
George Irwin: Yeah just do the best we can. Well Cool, Brit it's been really great chatting with you and I love your work. I'm so happy to see a lot of it go to great collections and good homes and I hope that your travels coming up are great. And then we'll connect when you come to Dallas and we'll do one of these in person or something like that. Yeah, that'd be awesome. That'd be really cool. And I guess that's it. I hope you have a great week making some carvings.
Brit Hansen: Thanks for visiting my studio today.
George Irwin: Yeah, thanks for having us. All right thank you everybody for tuning in and for watching also. This will be on the Instagram Live channel thing, TV right here. And then it should be archived at some point too so you guys can come visit it if you didn't see the whole thing. And I guess that's it. Thanks so much.
Brit Hansen: Hey.
George Irwin: All right, adios.
