Anders Hansen Art

from Philthy Conversations with Artists

Intro to Lines

Anders’ eye is to the line. A thick black watery line echoed by a pencil-thin sister line, loose, and yet somehow bracing the true form of the body. He feels the form’s dimension: that kind of stuff you can’t fake. He expresses it with what appears to be a rapid ease. His figures remind me of the liquid light a body can take on in a darkened room. In fact, it was a luminous body in a darkened room that brought Anders back from other ventures and returned him to the realm of art. But how did he get so far away in the first place?

His early childhood was marked with strong visual memories. His adolescence, one of sensual reaction to art. Not one to linger in front of every piece in an art gallery and read every card, Anders watches for the sensual pull, the moment of being drawn in. You can tell this when talking to Anders. He listens well, and he a keen eye, a sharp awareness that he couches in a gentle tone. He celebrates the people around him.

The Flute is a Line

As a youth, Anders attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art but later abandoned art completely. In this long interval, the flute entered Anders’ life. He worked hard and practiced a lot, mostly in the baroque realm, learning to produce what he refers to as “wonderful colors.” He loves jazz and was partly drawn to the flute by listening to it, though he’s never come close to mastering jazz. He has studied the baroque, classical and contemporary flute, while harboring an unrealized desire to play jazz.

“I would take it to work and practice on the roof of the building.” He smiles. “It brought me lovers and a trip to Greece.” “Playing any instrument is a sensuous experience. When you get in the groove, you feel your whole body is vibrating. It’s always a delight to make a sound on it.”

In the spirit of Philthy Art, Anders dug deep and was forthcoming about his past. Philthy Art’s interest in personal affairs has to do with wanting to keenly understand from where in a person’s life their art emerges.

The artist-turned-flautist’s first marriage was right out of high school, at age 17. They had a daughter but the union only lasted two years.. His second was in his thirties, which he calls a “rich couple of years.” It was with a woman he’d been in love with since the fourth grade.

The Process Line

Right now, Anders feel drawn to the black and white line, but has a process that he needs to evolve into something different. In drawing a figure, his first goal is to have a good line drawing, but on the other hand, wants it to be free. His experience at Body Worlds walking through the exhibited bodies, quickly sketching gesture with a line and a little wash.

In terms of a tradition, Anders consciously strays from the obvious patterns. He seems to be seeking the lyric, or the spirit of his subject. When Anders draws me, he makes me beautiful while clinging to a bracing honesty about my body, seeing it as it is.

Hansen is not interested in realism, finds reverie in Kandinsky, Motherwell, and Pollock. He takes much of his love for the line from Botticelli, Matisse, and muralists like Rivera. In drawing figures, he wants something coherent that doesn’t seem labored. Light and shade and lots of mystery.

He also credits inspirtation by Klee, the Zen ink masters, Kathe Kollwitz, and his biggest personal influence, Frederick Reiniger, a wonderful man from whom he took art lessons from early childhood through high school. A friend, mentor, second father, great spirit, fantastic artist.

But there were many years when Anders didn’t paint. At 57 he picked the paintbrush back up. I pressed him for a reason. There had been an early impression from his first marriage. Two teenagers caught up in physical and mental chaos, but still that image impressed and lingered. She looked to him like a figure out of Bonnard in deep indigo.

“All physical relationships go right into figures.” He never tries to deny the model’s sexuality, but responds to the body as a whole.

As Anders puts it: “While we study the figure as objectively as possible (within a charmed circle at the life classes), we can’t help but be arrested by moments of breathtaking beauty; sometimes it’s purely aesthetic, but often there is also a sensual or erotic component that hopefully gets subsumed into the art work. One tries to carry the same awareness into whatever one studies for the purposes of making art. The living, sensuous and dramatic lines and volumes that the figure gives us are ideals applicable to all forms of art.”

And there had been a voice in his head: “If not now…when?”