Sketch Book by H. Craig Hanna

In this first monographic work devoted to Craig Hanna, drawings, sketches and hand-written texts are gathered and assembled from over ten years of the artist’s sketchbooks. The book displays the processes and paths taken by the artist to produce works informed by classical drawing, but situated resolutely in the 21st century. He does not choose between abstraction and figuration, but maintains a ‘cold war’ between the line and the color field. Portraits, drawings, paintings, self-portraits, of different sizes, full-length, busts in the mirror, from different angles, in different tones, more or less dressed… Craig Hanna opposes or approaches, we don’t know quite how, pure painting and a taut description of the figure.

Laurence Lhinares is a Research Associate for the Musée du Louvre and the Fondation Custodia, Paris.