Art Heals All Wounds
Do you think art can change the world? So do I! We’re at a pivotal moment when scientists, medical practitioners, and creatives are coming together in recognition of the ways that art plays an indispensable role in our well-being, as individuals, communities, and societies. In each episode we hear from artists and creatives who share their inspiration for their work and its wider impact. These conversations about transformative artistic practices show the ways that art can be a catalyst for healing and change.
How do we change the world? One artist at a time.
Art Heals All Wounds
Painting About Climate Change by Bringing Humanity to the Canvas with Christine Hanlon
In this episode of "Art Heals All Wounds," I speak with visual artist Christine Hanlon about her art and its focus on challenging subjects. Christine shares how she uses her work to engage with issues such as homelessness and climate change, emphasizing the importance of centering the human element in her paintings. Through her unique approach, Christine aims to draw viewers into narratives that might otherwise be uncomfortable or ignored.
Key Points:
· Introduction to Christine Hanlon (00:02:08): Christine Hanlon discusses her background as a visual artist and teacher. She explains her long-standing love for painting and how her work resonates with contemporary cultural issues.
· Homelessness Project (00:03:00): Christine talks about her graduate thesis project focusing on homelessness in San Francisco. She shares her experience of living in San Francisco during that time and how it informed her work. Her master's thesis show, "Home Street Home," served as a fundraiser for the Coalition on Homelessness.
· Artistic Approach and Impact (00:08:15): Christine explains how her artistic process involves using sacred geometry ratios to place figurative elements in her compositions, encouraging viewers to look more closely at challenging subjects.
· Current Work on Climate Change (00:09:55): Christine discusses her transition to focusing on climate disasters, particularly fires and melting glaciers. She explains how she developed this theme after moving to Oregon, inspired by media images and personal observations.
· The Importance of Challenging Topics (00:20:32): Christine shares her motivation for tackling subjects that are difficult to look at, such as homelessness and environmental issues. She emphasizes the need for activism and awareness in addressing these pressing global concerns.
· Artistic Inspiration and Expression (00:31:24): Christine reflects on her artistic journey and the influence of other artists who address tough issues. She describes how combining sacred geometry with social issues in her artwork allows for a complete expression of her concerns as an artist.
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Pam Uzzell [00:00:12]:
Do you believe art can change the world? So do I! On this show, we meet artists whose work is doing just that. Welcome to Art Heals All Wounds. I'm your host, Pam Uzzell.What's happening in the world right now that you don't want to look at? I bet each one of us can come up with a list of things that are hard for us to see. We could probably also come up with a list of things that other people either can't or don't see. How could you get someone's attention to look at something that's really challenging, to recognize it and understand it in a new way? Today's artist, Christine Hanlon, is a painter who isn't afraid to look at difficult things. She finds a way to create work that centers the human element, so that the difficult thing can be understood more as a who than a thing. And people are looking at her work, at a reflection of their own humanity in circumstances that are maybe hard to consider.
Pam Uzzell [00:01:46]:
You wanna know how you can really help me keep this show going? Follow me on your favorite listening app. So easy. Right? And if you really wanna give the show a boost, leave me a 5 star rating or review. Hi, Christine. It's so great to have you on Art Heals All Wounds. Can you start by telling us who you are and what you do?
Christine Hanlon [00:02:08]:
Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. And my name is Christine Hanlon. I am a visual artist and a teacher. I've been painting and making 2 dimensional work since high school. I love the medium of paint, and I love visual art, and I love color, and I love making work that has some sort of resonance with our culture, our contemporary culture, and the issues that we're facing. And this started in a more intentional way for me while I was in graduate school. And at that time, I got very concerned about one of the issues at that time that was starting to become visually evident in our culture was homelessness.
Christine Hanlon [00:03:00]:
And not a lot of people were focusing on it as artists, and I just thought this is something that people don't wanna look at. People were walking by homeless people on the street, and basically just acting like they weren't there. And the homeless population wasn't very large at that time. It's much larger now, but it seemed like one of many issues that would be good to focus on. And and, initially, my thesis was gonna be about a a variety of issues, but I quickly honed in on the homeless issue. And it had the advantage of allowing a figurative element in the work, which is what I love to do. I can say more about that and how I use the figure later, but that continues to be my favorite visual expression, when there's a figurative element within an environment, whether it's an urban environment or a landscape, or in the case of my current work, a very intense environment like fires or glaciers that are melting or something like that. So and the figurative element is a way to pull the viewer in to the narrative, basically.
Pam Uzzell [00:04:21]:
I'm curious about a couple of things. First is, where were you living at the time when you did this project on homelessness?
Christine Hanlon [00:04:31]:
We were actually living in San Francisco and were experiencing some aspects of it ourselves. Actually, we lived in a variety of different ways. We lived on boats. We lived vehicularly. And at that time, it didn't seem like a big deal because we were young and you can do just about anything when you're young, in your forties is young. But it was challenging. I had places to be. I had a wonderful studio.
Christine Hanlon [00:05:11]:
Eventually, I continued living in San Francisco in a warehouse building, in an artist community building, but not during the time of my thesis project.
Pam Uzzell [00:05:24]:
Yeah. That housing insecurity is very true for a lot of people, not least among them artists in the Bay Area. It's really challenging. And secondly, it is an issue where you would have an abundant ability to observe it, to put into your work. And I'm gonna add a third, which is that I think you're right. It's something people don't want to see, and our response to it so much has been like these they're called sweeps, which is such a horrible word because in in every implication of you use the word sweeps to talk about clearing places of people. But I wanna go back to this project on homelessness. I'm so curious to know other people's responses to this focus.
Christine Hanlon [00:06:20]:
It became a passion for me. So I did a lot of driving around the city and photographing places and sometimes people. And we even staged situations like a homeless encampment. And, we did and my partner was a figure in one of my major compositions, a huge painting with the San Francisco skyline in the background. And so and I staged myself as one of the homeless persons in another really large painting. So artists do that. They they tend to create scenarios that mimic reality because as artists, we have the most control over the use of ourselves. It's the reason artists do self portraits, etcetera.
Christine Hanlon [00:07:15]:
And then the thing that was really most satisfying for me was that I used my my master's thesis show, which was entitled Home Street Home, as a fundraiser for the Coalition on Homelessness, which is an organization in San Francisco. And I promoted the show in a massive way. I did so much self promotion and marketing to media, and it was a very successful opening. And I got I got Willie Brown to attend. The media came. Even homeless people attended the reception, and I sold a tremendous amount of work, which was amazing. And I gave 10% of the work to of the sales to the Coalition on Homelessness. And so the reaction from people was universally positive.
Christine Hanlon [00:08:15]:
Let's put it that way.
Pam Uzzell [00:08:16]:
So nobody questioned, like, this is depressing or this is
Christine Hanlon [00:08:22]:
No. No. And the reason is because of my my process of creating these narratives was to use sacred geometry ratios, like the golden section and compositional grids that allowed me to place the figurative elements in key positions in the composition so that they weren't always immediately noticeable. So people would be drawn in to the painting, and they wouldn't quite figure out what it was until they realized, oh my gosh, this is beautiful, but wow, there's a homeless person on the street. Wow. And I started showing the work before my master's thesis show. My intention was actually to do that, was to draw people in to what at first glance seemed like a beautiful scene. And that's exactly the response that people told me they had to the work, which was another sort of a a covert way to get people to look at a subject that I feel and felt was very important, but maybe somebody else didn't feel it was important.
Pam Uzzell [00:09:36]:
Okay. So having talked about that approach to your work, I'd love for you to talk about the type of work you're doing now. Another feel good topic that, you know, a very important topic that people, if they could ignore it, I think really would.
Christine Hanlon [00:09:55]:
Well, my work, it didn't just jump from focusing on urban homeless to focusing on climate disasters and fires, sort of went through various stages. And I did do a series of paintings with figurative elements in atmospheric environments where the figures were very small, things like, firemen working in urban environments and flood scenes and construction workers at night. These were all urban settings. And then I moved into maritime work, and I didn't focus on traditional maritime. I focused on oil tankers and cargo ships and leaking oil tankers and sinking tankers, and that was basically my desire to focus on our over dependence on oil, both for export trade and just that we're just addicted to fossil fuels and, you know, there are consequences. We're gonna continue to damage the environment with it. So and that work was pretty well received too. I got awards with that kind of work.
Christine Hanlon [00:11:08]:
And it it wasn't until I moved to Oregon. We moved up to Oregon about 12 years ago, and I was a little discombobulated for a few years. I didn't really have a strong focus. I continued to do work, but I didn't feel really inspired. I was away from an urban area, and nothing was really making me feel passionate about what I was doing, particularly in a in a current way. And then all these mega fires started happening, 2017, 18, and and I just started seeing, oh, this imagery in the media, this just insane, intense fires in Oregon and California. It just, you know, the drought was getting worse. The fires were getting worse.
Christine Hanlon [00:11:59]:
All these images of firemen fighting fires, it just seemed oh my god. You know, this is insane. I gotta try to paint this. So I started to do watercolor sketches of fires. And of course I looked at many, many images and I was never exactly copying an image. I was doing what I did with any other theme, the homeless theme or whatever is I was composing, you know, taking a figure of element from here, you know, something from there and putting them together to create a visual impact. And so I started using firemen as figures in an intense atmospheric fire scene, essentially. And, I started showing those and got some positive reaction, actually made some sales.
Christine Hanlon [00:12:57]:
People who understood what firefighting was about got them, actually. I have a friend whose son is a smoke jumper or whatever they call those hotshots. They jump into fires from a yeah. Really intense work, and she bought some of the work. And then I just felt I've only barely begun to explore this theme. So I wanted to continue and I did, I continued with that work. And 2 years ago, I had a solo show at our local museum, the Cussard Museum, and I used that opportunity to about half the work in the show was my environmental work. Well, specifically related to fire and ice, you know, melting glaciers and stuff.
Christine Hanlon [00:13:49]:
I continue to be enamored with and fascinated with geometric ratios and proportions like the golden section, square root of the golden section, harmonic ratios.
Pam Uzzell [00:14:03]:
You know, I have no idea what those terms mean.
Christine Hanlon [00:14:07]:
Well, the golden section is a specific ratio, which you don't really even have to understand what it is numerically, but you can think of it as a proportion that is considered visually harmonious. Our own bodies, the proportions of our face, the height of our bodies, where our navel is placed relative to our height, where our eyes sit in our face relative to, you know, vertical length of the face. Those are all based on the proportion of the golden section. Many natural organic things like plants and animals, including humans, our growth and our development is based on this is just a particular proportion that and I think that intuitively humans relate to the golden section and find it so pleasing because we are literally we grow with that proportion embedded in our structure. And they've done studies where they've shown all different kinds of rectangles, which is just the proportion of one's length to a longer length, short to long. So that's a ratio. It's called a proportion. So and they've they've shown lots of rectangles to people.
Christine Hanlon [00:15:28]:
And the one that gets picked as the most pleasing in more than other ones is the golden section. It's a very proportional ratio. One way to think of it that will make sense is the proportion of the short side to the long side is exactly the same proportion as the long side to both sides. So it's it's and it's the only ratio that's like that. It's a really beautiful ratio. Think of the nautilus shell. It grows based on the spiraling is done based on this ratio. Many plants grow.
Christine Hanlon [00:16:11]:
The the number of, like, the sunflower, the number of spirals is based on this proportion. It's a huge subject, and and I studied this when I was in graduate school with master geometer, Mark Reynolds, who was one of my professors. And I just got so into it that I I couldn't stand it. I'm so
Pam Uzzell [00:16:36]:
Well, that's fascinating. It seems like then it's a natural aspect of the natural world of which we're a part.
Christine Hanlon [00:16:45]:
Mhmm.
Pam Uzzell [00:16:46]:
And that that is something that we immediately gravitate to.
Christine Hanlon [00:16:50]:
Yeah.
Pam Uzzell [00:16:51]:
I've never heard the term. I mean, I the concept makes sense, but I've never heard a term for that.
Christine Hanlon [00:16:56]:
Well, one thing you have heard, I'm sure, is the rule of thirds.
Pam Uzzell [00:17:01]:
Yes. Of course.
Christine Hanlon [00:17:02]:
And that's something that many people have heard of, particularly visual artists or photographers or videographers. And the rule of 3rd is basically taking a rectangle, dividing it into thirds vertically and horizontally, and then you end up with cross points, which are considered a pleasing point to put a focal point. Now the rule of thirds is not the same as the golden section. It's slightly different. So the ratio of the rule of thirds would be 1.66666 or 1.333. So these are fractions, which is whole numbers divided into equal, you know, thirds, quarters, 5ths. Those are fractions. That's whole numbers.
Christine Hanlon [00:17:52]:
Okay. The golden section is an irrational number, which is why it's so mind blowing. Okay? An irrational number is a number that 1.61842, it goes on forever and it never repeats and it never ends.
Pam Uzzell [00:18:11]:
Is that like pi? Is that Yes.
Christine Hanlon [00:18:13]:
Yes. Pi is an irrational number too.
Pam Uzzell [00:18:16]:
Fascinating.
Christine Hanlon [00:18:17]:
So the golden section is irrational and we can physically create it with a compass and ruler and approximate it, but mathematically, it is a number that never ends, it never resolves itself, which is why it's called irrational. So when you like, here's a good example. If you're taking a picture and you wanna put the horizon line at a particular division from top to bottom, You can do it a third of the way down, or you could do it at the golden section cut, which would be just slightly different. It's 1.618 or rounded to 1.62, whereas a third would be 1.66666, 1.333, so it's a slightly different division. And you can test it out. You can look at photographs where the the main division of the horizon is put at a fractional division, like the rule thirds, or it's put at the golden section cut. See which one you like better.
Pam Uzzell [00:19:24]:
I am gonna be doing a lot of Googling after this conversation.
Christine Hanlon [00:19:26]:
Well, I will warn you that it's an endless subject. You will find tremendous amount of information. Some of it not always accurate. There's a lot of bad geometry when you search. Like, people don't really understand what they're talking about.
Pam Uzzell [00:19:48]:
Well, any geometry I would attempt today would be bad geometry, but I know what you mean. Math was a long time ago for me. Well, I wanna talk still about this work that you're tackling now and why do you gravitate towards topics which are challenging? And I've seen your work. Your work is beautiful. So it's not a question of that has anything to do with the aesthetic of the work. It's a question of the content because I've had films that I've contemplated where I thought, oh no, I can't do that. I can't work on something like this for a long period of time. And I'm wondering about, for you as an artist, that question.
Christine Hanlon [00:20:32]:
Yeah. Well, as I mentioned earlier, from much of my much of my later adult life, I've been politically involved. I've I've always felt that activism of some sort, you know, being a human on this planet, it's like, how can you not be involved in something that's about what's happening right now on the planet? It's like war, famine, environmental degradation, homelessness, justice issues. I mean, they're just they hit us in the face all the time, and they're only getting worse, unfortunately. And environmental issues are getting worse because we're not addressing climate change quickly enough. And, human beings are really good at denial. They're really good at looking at things and then going, oh, I don't care. It doesn't doesn't affect me.
Christine Hanlon [00:21:33]:
It's not in my way. It's not in my face. But, actually, it is. And that's the way I feel about politics. People say, I'm not into politics. You know? It's like, well, you might not be into it, but it's gonna affect you. So whatever issue you think is not gonna impact you, whether it be the political landscape, the environmental issues, you know, war. I mean, look at all the money being siphoned to wars around the world.
Christine Hanlon [00:22:03]:
It's not going to dealing with climate change. It's such a waste of resources. And so that's the reason why I don't like turning away from issues, because, obviously, I don't I don't full time look at disaster and injustice and lack of humanity. I couldn't I couldn't remain sane if I did. I have to I have the luxury of being able to walk outside and be in an orchard, be on a beautiful piece of property. You know, I feel grateful for that. But I can't completely turn away from what's going on in the world. I never have been able to.
Christine Hanlon [00:22:48]:
And from a very young age, I've always felt this way. Injustice really bothers me deeply. Everything about the world that's not just, it really bothers me. So homelessness is is an obvious issue. It's like why in the richest country in the world should there be so many people living on the street? It doesn't make any sense. It only makes sense if you look at what global capitalism has done to our world, essentially.
Pam Uzzell [00:23:19]:
Right.
Christine Hanlon [00:23:20]:
Really destroying the world, actually. Destroying our humanity is really what it's doing. And that's connected to climate change. So those two issues are totally connected. People think, well, they don't have anything to do with it. Of course they have something to do with each other.
Pam Uzzell [00:23:36]:
And I think, you know, you talk about that. Obviously you can't just focus on either of these topics full time. But by the same token, if you shut them out, you are doing damage to your own humanity. Whether you realize that or not in terms of your ability to feel empathy, I do think a huge source of anger and anxiety right now is on inequity in our world and on climate anxiety that people just are not getting. You know, when you when you New York and there's no snow, when you are facing down something that could possibly land as a category 5 hurricane. You know, I just feel like that anxiety when the ocean is way too warm. I I it it almost makes me in a metaphorical way. What does it call? The golden
Christine Hanlon [00:24:43]:
section.
Pam Uzzell [00:24:43]:
The golden section. We feel that things are not
Christine Hanlon [00:24:49]:
In balance.
Pam Uzzell [00:24:50]:
Imbalanced. We feel that things are not imbalanced. And I wonder, are we at a point I mean, there are a lot of reasons for it, but are we at a point right now and I'll just talk about the US, where we are maybe the angriest that we've ever been. And like not I think one beautiful thing about your work is maybe showing us, is this maybe why you're angry? Yeah. Well,
Christine Hanlon [00:25:21]:
one of my, I guess, intentions, whether it happens or not, is that I try to I try to look at and depict subjects without judgment. I'm not telling people what to feel or how to take it, you know, how to interpret it. I'm just putting it out in the way that I feel will pull someone in to look at this issue. The more fire imagery and paintings that I do, the more I realize that the firefighter, that lone or 1 or 2 figures in this environment is kind of like he or she represents humanity. You know? It's like, how can you not feel compassion or empathy for that person? I can't even imagine being a firefighter. I cannot even imagine it, the intensity of it, and yet we're all being subjected to it, and yet somebody else is dealing with it. And it's the same way with like homeless or environment intense environmental issues. A lot of people will look, but they don't really register.
Christine Hanlon [00:26:39]:
It's like, oh, that's horrible, and then look away. Until until people are personally impacted by it, you know and I know people who've been completely burned out, lost their homes. And for those people, I know the I know friends and and students, former students and people, and they will say, your paintings are really something, but they're too intense for me because I was personally impacted by that. That's someone who's actually been personally impacted by climate disaster. But think of all the people who haven't yet been impacted. See? So maybe it will spur more awareness, more attention, like, get people to take it a little more seriously. And it was like, that's oh, I'm not in a hurricane area. Okay.
Christine Hanlon [00:27:35]:
I'm not worried about hurricanes. Well, yeah, I've got family that are in hurricane situations. You know?
Pam Uzzell [00:27:41]:
Right. Right.
Christine Hanlon [00:27:42]:
You can't you can't make people be empathetic or compassionate. You can't you can't force that. People aren't like that. Human beings only feel for other humans when it starts to impact them. Most humans, I should say. But I don't know. I've always felt you know, it's like we're a global community. Like, you gotta care about everybody.
Christine Hanlon [00:28:08]:
It's not just your little world. And I think in countries with not so much wealth, you hear stories about this all the time, people traveling in countries where people don't have very much at all, and yet they're way more welcoming and kind and welcome you in. And it's like, what is it about the US? You know, why are people so angry?
Pam Uzzell [00:28:33]:
Right. I've asked myself that many times.
Christine Hanlon [00:28:37]:
It's just a false narrative, you know?
Pam Uzzell [00:28:39]:
Yeah. I this is this is probably material for a different podcast in terms of why why it's so easy. But I do think it goes back to the fear and dis-ease that comes from such great inequity.
Christine Hanlon [00:28:57]:
Yes.
Pam Uzzell [00:28:58]:
And then also the sense that something is really, really wrong and someone comes and they give you the answer. Oh, this is what's wrong. And it's an easy answer, but it's not the answer of what is actually driving the hardship in your own life. And I was just I had an interview with another person and she said something that really struck me, which is that to, I'll never quote it correctly, for there to be a thing, you have to think it. And when I think about your work, especially as a visual artist, I think maybe the first step for a lot of people is acknowledgement, awareness, recognition. And so I feel like, you know, the collective job of an artist and yours in particular is to help us think a thing.
Christine Hanlon [00:29:54]:
To go back to your original question, you said, what motivates me? Why do I wanna look at subjects like this? I don't feel like my complete psyche is involved in art making unless all these elements come into my work. So it's not healing for me in the sense that I don't think I'm I'm not healing anybody else. I'm just doing what I feel I need to do as a person at this time on this planet as a visual artist. It's just and if that expression allows other people to feel into or to think about the content of the work, great. That's sort of a byproduct of because as artists, you can never control people's reaction to your work, but you can only control what you put into it and your own reason for doing it. And when I started using sacred geometry and social issues and painting all at once, it just felt so right as an artist. It's just like, wow, all these things can be can come together in my visual expression. So it was it was about my own expression as an artist.
Christine Hanlon [00:31:24]:
And I can't I can make I can do traditional figurative or landscape work that's just pretty pictures. Anybody who's a representational artist can. You know? It's almost just like skill building. You know? But for something to be a complete expression of who you are, all your concerns and all everything you feel and everything you want to express in or as an artist, it's gotta be a little bit more. And so for me, hard subjects are is part of what makes me feel, like, complete as an artist.
Pam Uzzell [00:32:05]:
It's your sweet spot, which is very interesting.
Christine Hanlon [00:32:08]:
Yeah. When I was in graduate school, I looked at a lot of artwork. And, of course, some of the artists historically that I I loved was, you know, Goya or Rembrandt, much older, but then, there's so many artists, contemporary painter who I looked at a lot and whose work is just incredible and focuses on really hard issues is Jerome Witkin. Actually, he's a photographer. It's, it's their twin brothers. 1 is a painter, the other is a photographer, and they both create artwork on really intense subjects. You know? The holocaust, homelessness, domestic violence, just all the hard issues. You know? So there are artists out there who feel compelled to do that, and I find them very inspiring.
Christine Hanlon [00:33:07]:
Jerome Witkin. Yeah. It's Jerome. Jerome Witkin. Yeah. Look his work up. You'll be blown away.
Pam Uzzell [00:33:12]:
I will. I will. Christine, can you tell people where they can look at some of this work? Because I think after hearing this, people are gonna wanna see the work you've been describing.
Christine Hanlon [00:33:27]:
Yeah. Oh, thank you. I have a website. It's just christinehanlon.com. You can also go to I have a page that kinda leads to other places where you can see my work. So, it's the painters keys.com.
Pam Uzzell [00:33:46]:
I'll put it in the show notes.
Christine Hanlon [00:33:47]:
Yeah. Yeah. That's a really good spot for people to see an overview of my work. They can see, they can see many of the different series that we were talking about as well as other links to places where you can see my work besides my website.
Pam Uzzell [00:34:04]:
Well, thank you for having this conversation. When we first connected, I kind of thought this is what I wanna talk to Christine about. And yeah. And I learned a lot too.
Christine Hanlon [00:34:20]:
Thank you. It was really great.
Pam Uzzell [00:34:24]:
You're listening to Art Heals All Wounds. Thank you so much to Christine Hanlon for being on the show to talk about her work and to talk about looking at the hard things. I really admire the way that Christine engages with the challenging stuff and creates work so that we don't look away. What kind of creative work do you do that helps you with challenging things? I'd love to hear about it and share it on the show. Just go to my website, arthealsallwoundspodcast.com, and leave me a voicemail. If you feel like you can, or want to leave me a donation, those are great help in keeping the show going. Art Heals All Wounds is completely independent. So anything you give goes a long way.
Pam Uzzell [00:35:37]:
Thanks for listening.
The music you've heard in this podcast is by Ketsa and Lobo Loco.
This podcast was edited by Iva Hristova.