Britt with Mask
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Robin(father), Britt, & Ernie Hager
(grandfather)
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I am a third generation artist from the Pacific Northwest. My paternal grandfather met my grandmother at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland Oregon in the 1930’s. My grandfather was a sculptor (photo 1) who also had a successful graphic design business and a syndicated comic strip, and my grandmother was a painter. My father is also a painter and sculptor who currently lives in the San Francisco area, who most recently has been working on a series of “modern” totem poles (photo 2). I mention my family because I think my art has been extremely influenced by both my grandfather’s and father’s art. I am inspired to create art with a sculptural element that also utilizes bold colors. My work so far has primarily focused on mixed media wall sculptures and oil painting. I have also paid the bills over the years painting murals, faux painting and fulfilling numerous commissions.
I was born in Portland, and pursued art full time after high school by attending the Art institute of Seattle, after which I earned a Bachelor’s degree of Fine Art from Portland State University, with emphasis in painting and art history. My sculpture series started as a senior project as an experiment and turned out to be a technique that I used to produce over 30 additional sculptures. Since graduating high school, I have lived in several cities including Seattle, San Francisco, Las Vegas, and New Orleans. I have also shown and sold my work in several galleries located in Seattle, San Francisco, and Portland. In the year 2000 I moved away from Portland again, this time with my husband to Santa Fe New Mexico, where we currently live. We opened a Gallery in downtown Santa Fe for a brief time where I was also able to show my work, until starting a family required my full time attention. Regretfully, we closed the gallery with hopes of opening another in our future.
Most of my energy in the past 5 years has been devoted to my 2 young children, Noah and Roman, both boys. Any left over energy has been spent remodeling and expanding our fixer-upper adobe home in Santa Fe (which has turned out to be a much larger project than we anticipated!). Part of our expansion has included a separate art studio, where I am now able to work again.
I am very excited to finally get back into the art world!