Ted Hahs
the Artist
My Process
Inspiration comes at different times. I see an image in my imagination that is an overlay of something I see, a sort of artistic virtual reality. I look at the world this way and see paintings all the time, most of them just come and go, but sometimes, something—circumstances, an overwhelming inner feeling, a combination of factors—tips the scales and I feel compelled to manifest the image in oil and canvas (or whatever is the chosen medium).
Once I start a painting, it is always a struggle, I rarely felt like paintings flowed easily. I am self taught, and I never feel like my skills are adequate. On the contrary, I am struggling against my medium and my own limitations, but embracing that struggle is part of the creative process and it is out of the tension between the inspiration and my own limitations that the art is created. I found often times the aspects that please me the most come from my limitations not from my talent. As my style has matured I’ve learned to just have fun and run with what sparks joy and passion. In many ways it feels like the art create itself through me, rather than me creating it.
Sacred Spaces
“The earth is the LORD’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods. Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD? or who shall stand in his holy place?”
The gothic cathedrals are incredible triumphs of engineering and art. They were designed to help the worshipper experience the grandeur of the creator, the walls pushed higher and higher with light flooding in from the larger and larger stained glass windows. They certainly had that effect upon me.
I love modern architecture, but the cathedrals are unique, there is nothing we build currently that can really be compared to them. They were built over generations, it took 50 to 250 years or longer to complete a cathedral. You could say that is because they built slower or you could say that is because they had a longer vision, I prefer the later. A builder would begin something that only his children, grandchildren or great grandchildren would finish, this is a sense of perspective and generational continuity that we have lost in modern times. Not only were these grand structures built without modern machinery, even with modern machinery, we would be very hard pressed to build a cathedral today because we no longer have the same level of craftsmanship. The feeling I had was overwhelming awe. As I look at these paintings now, so many year later after I painted them, I think something must have rubbed off on me. I feel like I over performed my own skill, I was just a beginning painter and yet they are some of my best and I would be hard pressed to recreate them now.
My Vision
Portraits
“What is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?
You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor.”
My Hope
I hope my art may help you see the world slightly differently. We are all just small players in an unfolding story so much bigger than we can imagine, but if we can let go and focus on the positive contribution we can make, not worrying so much if it is big or small, we can have far outside impact.
Perhaps it will inspire you to see beauty around you that you have not noticed before. Perhaps you will see a person you’ve overlooked before and recognize the sublime beauty in each of God’s children.
Self Portraits
“Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.”
