The Kernal Encounters a Swarm of Crickets

1983

American, born 1921

Gaylen Hansen employed a host of animals and insects in his paintings along with his invented frontiersman alter ego, the Kernal. Often situated in landscapes reminiscent of the Palouse region of Washington, where Hansen has lived and worked for most of his life, his fantastical scenes evoke both a specific sense of place and the wonder of impossibility.

Oil on canvas

71 1/2 x 83 in. (181.61 x 210.82 cm)

Margaret E. Fuller Purchase Fund and gift of Byron W. Todd in memory of his wife Patricia Todd

88.99

Not currently on view

Resources

Exhibition HistoryPullman, Washington, Washington State University Museum of Art, Gaylen Hansen: The Paintings of a Decade, October 14 - November 17, 1985 (Seattle Art Museum, November 26, 1985 - February 2, 1986; Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University, March 29 - June 1, 1986; The Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, July 3 - August 15, 1986; Portland Center for the Visual Arts, Oregon, September 12 - October 19, 1986; San Jose Museum of Art, November 15, 1986 - January 11, 1987; Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Cultural Affairs Dept., January 27 - March 1, 1987).

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Views and Visions in the Pacific Northwest, June 7 - September 2, 1990.

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Weird and Whimsical: Northwest Art from the Permanent Collection, January 4 - October 14, 2001.

Pullman, Washington, Washington State University Museum of Art, Gaylen Hansen: Three Decades of Paintings, February 16 - April 8, 2007.

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Freeing the Figure, November 5, 2009 - November 28, 2010.

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Poke in the Eye: Art of the West Coast Counterculture, June 21 - September 2, 2024.

Published ReferencesKangas, Matthew, "Return to the Viewer: Selected Art Reviews", Midmarch Arts Press, 2011, pg. 102

Darling, Michael et al. Betty Bowen Award: Thirty Years. Seattle, WA: Seattle Art Museum, 2009, illus. p. 8

Platt, Susan. "Paradigms and Paradoxes: Nature, Morality and Art in America," in Art Journal, Vol. 51, No. 2 (Art and Ecology), Summer 1992, pp. 85-88, illus. p. 88, fig. 6

Johns, Barbara. Modern Art from the Pacific Northwest in the Collection of the Seattle Art Museum. Seattle, WA: Seattle Art Museum, 1990, no. 28, p. 32

"Public Invited to Meet Honors Award Artist Gaylen Hansen at Fairwood Library Dedication," in The ARTS, Newsletter of the King County Arts Commission, (May 1987), vol. 16, no. 5 (reproduced)

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