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Steve Hankin's
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Bio
Stephen Hankin's creative work deals with contemporary genre, landscape, still life, and figure and portrait painting. He earned his BFA at Carnegie Mellon University and his MFA at Pratt Institute of Art in Painting.
I was born in Pittsburgh in 1945 and I have lived in this city for all but ten years of my life.
I enjoy the familiarity of the place, the diversity of its character and the varied terrain and climate.
I especially love being close to our extended family. My wife and I both love to travel bue we love coming back to our hometown.
I graduated from CMU with a BFA in painting in 1967, moved to Brooklyn NY and earned my MFA from Pratt Institute. I then taught for two years at the Bronx Community College.
I moved back to Pittsburgh after hitch-hiking around the country and lived here for several years teaching, painting and exhibiting with the Associated Artist and Pittsburgh Plan for Art. In 1979 I moved to Wisconson to teach at UW-Steven’s Point where I became an Associate Professor and earned the schools Excellence In Teaching award (of which I am very proud). In 1985 I married Dr. Janice Kelly and moved back to Pittsburgh.
Since then I have taught for two years full time at
Carnegie-Mellon University and for almost eighteen years part-time at the University of Pittsburgh. I have had twenty one-person exhibitions, been in numerous group and juried exhibits and my work is in public and private collections all over the country. In 1996 I bought and renovated an old one-story building at 408 Lloyd St. in Point Breeze and opened the ‘Atelier,’ a combination studio/gallery where I regularly exhibit and sell my paintings.
Artist Statement
I’m a realist painter. I find inspiration in many subjects. Figure, portrait, landscape, still life and genre are all interesting to me.
Once I identify my motif I employ careful observation and paintings skills to develop an image that has a strong and believable resemblance to my subject. Hopefully, I will be able to reconstruct the relationships of color, tone,form and space to create a vivd image that is engaging. I find this process totally absorbing and satisfying.
I work primarily from life but occasionally use photographic references. When I am finished with a painting I instinctively begin searching for my next subject because I know that I’m happiest and least out of sorts when I am engaged with my work.
My work is my passion. Painting is about visual intimacy. It is tasting the world with my eyes. It is studying, exploring, analyzing, and experiencing nature; connecting my eyes, my intellect and my emotions.
Realist painting, for me, is the process of emersion that
involves contemplation, exhilaration, frustration, deliberation and spontaneity. It is a dynamic interaction: inventive, no formulas, pushing the limits of my skill and creativity in a tenacious quest for illusive truth. It is about discovery. It is about connecting to life.
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