My favorite artists (1): Line Juhl Hansen
My favorite artists (1): Line Juhl Hansen
Long before I started painting, I fanatically skimmed the Internet for artists who inspired me. I stored pictures of their paintings as photos in my photo library—it was long before I discovered Pinterest and Instagram—and very often looked at them. Just watching the colors, the compositions, and the soul in these artists’ paintings filled me with joy. I believe this joy was what made me start to paint. I wanted to put my heart and soul into painting as they did, too!
One of the first painters that I discovered was the Danish painter Line Juhl Hansen. I fell in love with her work at first sight, and I have been devouring her paintings on the Internet for years and years. Her blog was updated until 2012, though, and I could not find anything about her since. Now even her website is taken down (www.linejuhlhansen.dk). I don’t know what happened to her—I hope nothing is wrong.
What I love about Line Juhl Hansen’s work:
The graphic character
Line’s work is very graphic, and her compositions are very bold. Also, she uses letters from the alphabet in her work—both from newspapers and from stamping—which adds to the graphic nature. I love that.
The rough and wild quality of her strokes
For a long time, there was a video with an interview of Line Juhl Hansen on Youtube (unfortunately it has been taken down). In that video, you see her while painting, using big brushes and making huge strokes. Those gestures inspired me not to be too careful with my own paintings and just paint my heart out.
The combination of big movements and fine details
As I said, Line makes huge movements with her brushes, but at the same time, she creates very fine details. The big picture is beautiful, but if you look close up, the painting is just as exciting.
The humor in her work
In her work, you see all kinds of pictures. It gives her work a light touch.
Her free use of mixed media
In her paintings, you can see lots of papers and other materials shine through. It definitely inspired me to dive into the world of collage and mixed media. Line Juhl Hansen is one of those painters who use collage in a non-fussy way.
Her use of color
I love the colors of her work, and from the Youtube film, I learned that she only uses three primary colors (blue, red, and yellow, and of course black and white). I found this fascinating, and immediately understood why her colors look so beautiful—they are inherently harmonious. Because she creates all of her paintings with only these three colors, they all fit beautifully together. That’s why I believe that you could see her whole body of work as one big piece of art. I experimented too with using three primary colors as she did—without much result. But later on, I tried it again, with different colors, and with more white in the mix, and that worked out very well for me. The constraint of using only three colors has given my daily painting a big push forward. That’s why I used this concept of just using very few colors in my online course.
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The texture
I have always loved rough textures, and Line’s work offers plenty of them. In the Youtube video I already mentioned, you saw her gluing huge pieces of brown paper on the canvas to create a basic roughness in her work. If you take a close look at her paintings, you can still see the rough wrinkles and folds of these underlying pieces of paper.
The layeredness
In the Youtube video, she tells that she’s using a lot of layers, starting with big strokes and ending with the fine details. I love a lot of layers—they give depth and mystery to a painting, and her paintings are a perfect example of that.
Get inspired!
Below you can find some more paintings of Line Juhl Hansen (and I’m sorry that I’m not able to ask her permission to showcase them here).
I hope you get just as inspired as I am.
Bye!
Would you love to paint, but never take the time? Sign up here for the free video series about collage making, and start painting now!
Would you love to paint, but never take the time? Sign up here for the free video series about collage making, and start painting now!
Would you love to paint, but never take the time? Sign up here for the free video series about collage making, and start painting now!