About the Book
About the Artist
See Sample Pages
Extended Artist Bio Sample
Press Release
For hi-res images, visit greenwichworkshop.com/media

Artwork © Steve Hanks
© Greenwich Workshop Press

Steve Hanks is first and foremost a figure painter. His watercolor paintings are infused with emotion and a kind of poetry formed by light and shadow in his compositions. He often paints what he refers to as "moments of introspective solitude," with deep respect for the privacy of the individual lost in reflection. Each painting holds a mystery that is also a personal story about the artist as he expresses his own emotional unfolding through art.

Just as writers are urged to "write what you know," Steve Hanks paints what he lives. When his children were born his work was filled the profound intimacy between infants and parents, the unexpected joy of toddlers, and the wonder of youngsters finding their way in the outside world.

Throughout his body of work, the study of the figure is primary and no where is this more in evidence than in Hanks' nudes. Forms are defined by light slanting through windows and sunlight through fabric or the drape of a sheet. Through Steve's mastery of composition, shadow and light, his figures emerge from the paper fully formed, unique, and mysterious.

The emotional impact of these detailed and highly realistic paintings is undeniable. Whatever the subject--children, families, women, nudes, landscape, moving water, or textile patterns--the paintings are also about light and shadow, and reflect a personal challenge, pain, or joy of the artist.

The paintings in this volume represent the most extensive collection of the artist's work in over ten years. Some time after his divorce in the 1990s, Steve began a series of paintings about healing. The paintings in this series are both deeply personal in their symbolism of the artist's own life and universal in their emotion and experience. "I want my whole body of work to tell a story when I'm gone," says Steve. "It will tell the story of my life emotionally."

Steve Hanks is the premiere artist working in the technically-demanding field of realistic watercolor figure painting today. His astonishing realism comes from a skillful control of washes, edges and layers, and his knowledge of the properties of water and pigment. "Now I understand how to gain control by letting go," says the artist. "I just want to be part of the ride."

Download hi-res cover artwork

Although teachers often cited his artistic ability, Steve Hanks' main interest while growing up was sports, though his interest in art grew as he did. He studied for a year at the San Francisco Academy of Arts and received his Bachelors in Fine Arts from the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, during the explosive sixties. His classes in figure drawing formed a foundation he has drawn on his whole career.

Steve's early art shows the influence the shifting attitudes of the sixties had on the young artist. His first works were pencil-drawn caricatures and oil paintings until an allergic reaction to oil paint forced him to experiment with watercolors. Adapting techniques he learned for other media, Hanks learned to create watercolors as "finished" as oils.

By 1973, the artist's work began to gain recognition. Steve Hanks has twice won the Arts for the Parks Marine Art Award of Excellence, and has been one of the Arts for the Parks top 100 artists since 1989. He received the National Watercolor Society Merit Award and a Gold Medal from the National Academy of Western Art and was named Artist of the Year at the Pacific Rim Show in Seattle in 1999. Since 1993, he has been one of U.S. Art magazine's top ten American artists. Steve was one of five winners selected to the U.S. Art Hall of Fame in the year 2000.

Steve Hanks lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He is represented by the E.S. Lawrence Gallery in Aspen and the Trailside Galleries in Jackson Hole and Scottsdale.

To view the artist's entended bio from Moving On: The Art of Steve Hanks
as a PDF file, click here.

For a high-resolution image of the artist, click here.