Crepuscular. Not a word in common use today, it has long been linked in my mind with the word “corpuscle.” From there it goes to thoughts of slides prepared for a microscope, and thence to my love of marbled papers. A pan of gummed liquid is prepared (often carrageenan alga, known as Irish moss), colors are added to the surface, and a surfactant is dripped on to make islands of the pigments. These are then disturbed with a comb or pointed object, and a sheet of paper laid on top will take up the impromptu designs. Often the results remind me of bacteria or cancer cells, neuron nets or celestial nebulas. Light streaming through a fecund flourish, as in leaf edges the sun penetrates. To walk beneath a copse hung with those lanterns is to feel a promise made that cannot be made. A beauty that must be hard as crystal, and yet—not. The ephemeral we beg to not be so. And we set about the work of saving. Paints the green of copper or blues of cobalt. Or red, derived from gold made only in the final microseconds of a star’s collapse and explosion. We make shapes stay, as we go through them and away. A day fixed there. Made new with each glance.

Crystal Path (oil on canvas painting, 2018)

Copyrighted © by Erin Hanson. All rights reserved.
Appears here with artist’s permission.

Erin Hanson

(born 1981) is a contemporary American painter based in Oregon, who holds a degree in Bioengineering from University of California, Berkeley. She has been painting since she was eight years old, and is considered the originator of “Open Impressionism,” a style of painting which encompasses wide brush strokes and an alla prima technique where the paint is applied wet on wet without allowing earlier layers to dry. Using as few brush strokes as possible, her unique, minimalist method of placing impasto paint strokes without layering creates magnificent and dramatic landscapes.

Artist’s website: https://www.erinhanson.com/

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Behind-the-Scenes at the Erin Hanson Gallery, a fascinating tour of the McMinnville Gallery and Warehouse (5 April 2023)

⚡ An Interview with Erin Hanson: Impressionist Landscapes Today by Julien Delagrange at Contemporary Art Issue (6 September 2022)

⚡ Interview: Leading Contemporary Impressionist Sheds Light on Her Pioneering Practice by Kelly Richman-Abdou in My Modern Met (21 September 2019)

⚡ Erin Hanson Art at Fine Art America, with more than 600 of her paintings

Daryl Scroggins

has taught creative writing and literature at The University of Texas at Dallas, The University of North Texas, and the Writer’s Garret, in Dallas. He now lives in Marfa, Texas. He is the author of This Is Not the Way We Came In, a collection of flash fiction and a flash novel (Ravenna Press), Winter Investments: Stories (Trilobite Press), and Prairie Shapes: A Flash Novel (winner of the 2004 Robert J. DeMott Prose Contest). His poems, short stories, and creative nonfictions have appeared in magazines and anthologies across the country, including Blink Ink, Cutbank, Eastern Iowa Review, New Flash Fiction Review, Star 82 Review, and Third Wednesday, among others.