PORTRAITS HALEY HASLER: TRANSFORMATIVE
Haley Hasler presents new figurative paintings at Museum of Art Fort Collins.
Over the years, Haley Hasler has been a bride, a wife, a mother, an artist and even the Tooth Fairy. She has taken on these roles not only in real life, but also as characters in her figurative paintings that explore modern-day women who are finding the balance, sometimes haphazardly, of raising a family and working. Hasler delves a bit further and even imagines herself within the realm of art history, creating narratives based on traditional motifs.
As an art student 20 years ago, Hasler wanted to learn more about figurative painting but was unable to afford a model. She began painting mirror images of herself into her compositions, and hasn’t stopped since. What began as an exploration in technique and form became the driving force behind her rich narratives that speak to family, relationships and womanhood.
“It wasn’t about self-portraiture for the longest time, just a way to figure out how to paint a person,” Hasler says. “I’ve probably been doing this for 20 years without exactly understanding what I was doing, but I got to where I liked using myself as the figure because I could take off on it. When I have the model, I get involved in painting that person and looking at them from the outside. With a self-portrait I can go off in any direction because I’m actually less attached to making it look like me or be me.”
As the model for the characters in her paintings, the work becomes autobiographical or selfreferential but still speaks to the greater world. Throughout her series, Hasler plays with themes of mother and child, the inner versus exterior self, the wild and domestic, as well as comedy, fantasy and theatrics. Hasler’s personal experiences are often reflected in the narrative, helping to move the concepts into a contemporary context.
Through October 14, Hasler’s newest paintings will be on view at her hometown museum, the Museum of Art Fort Collins, in Colorado. Hasler was born in Fort Collins in 1971, and after studying painting at Indiana University and earning an
MFA from Boston University, she returned to the city in 2007 with her husband and their three children.
In addition to her paintings being on display, visitors to the show will be provided with a firsthand look into Hasler’s unique artistic process. Set up in the exhibition space will be an example of her reference material. Hasler prefers to work from life—only using photography of her children and animals—and thus requires elaborate still life-style setups to design the compositions. “I happened upon a mannequin, and all of a sudden clothing and the setup could play a really big role in my work,” Hasler recalls.
As an artist who labors over her work, Hasler is able to keep props up for months on end. “I build the painting and the setup simultaneously,” she says. “I’ll add to the setup; have one of my kids pose, take a photo of that, but often the shirt they’re wearing is put on a pillow in the setup so I can see the references of the light.”
Hasler sometimes uses the same props in multiple works, repurposing the items into new stories or similar themes. Such is the case with three pieces that were made together—Portrait as Bounty, Portrait
as Gorgeous Feast and Portrait as Gorgeous Feast II.
In all of them, viewers will notice the sprawling food and plants at the foot of her characters. This plays into the role of the wild versus the domestic, the artist
versus the housewife, and how to create the balance between the two. They also, as Hasler explains, touch upon forbidden fruit, flesh and procreation.
“I wanted the heroine to almost become the meal; to be herself the feast and the bounty,” she shares. “The self-portrait, whose eyes look back at the viewer, within this context of gorgeous food, subverts the habit of ‘woman being gazed upon’ so common in representations of female figures.”
In other pieces, such as Portrait as Origin of the
Milky Way, Portrait as Burning Bush and Mother and
Child with Snakes and Ribbons, Hasler’s role as a mother is on full display as well as themes from art history that can seep into the work.
“There are often women in historical paintings, but they’re painted for religious or different reasons from why I’m painting. The female character is central, often with it being Mary,” Hasler says. “I love them, but did not fully relate to them. Things were happening to me in my life; I was growing up, getting married, having children. It was the same subject matter, but I see it differently…so I’m trying to tell these same stories, about a mother, holding a baby, nursing a baby [but it is] a different story to tell.” Portrait as Origin of the Milky Way is based on
Tintoretto’s 1574 painting Origin of the Milky Way,
which depicts the myth of how the Milky Way was formed by the goddess Hera whose milk was strewn across the sky as she pushed away the infant Heracles, who acquires supernatural powers from the divine milk. In Hasler’s painting, the character is nursing a baby while other babies are flying through the air and her milk is also shooting and spilling around the scene.
“Breasts take on a whole new significance when one is nursing a child,” says Hasler. “One’s breasts become less private, more functional and at the same time tremendous and fascinating sources of life and sustenance.”
Portrait as a Burning Bush takes its origins from the 15th-century French painting Mary in the Burning
Bush by Nicolas Froment, where Hasler’s bush is a group of geraniums and houseplants that entangles the character—which she likens to Venus—in domesticity. Looking directly at the viewer, rather than the child who is standing on the chair next to her trying to reach in, Hasler says the woman could be caught up in her own private world. There is also a sense of fun and whimsy in the work, as there are balloons and a childlike energy from the boy.
A similar feeling comes about in Mother and Child
with Ribbons and Snakes, where Hasler’s personal role as mother of a 2-year-old boy is revealed through objects that make up much of her daily conversation: snakes and dinosaurs. “This painting went through several different stages before the ribbons came in,” Hasler explains. “They were an extension of the snake; the thing of danger transformed into beauty but also feminine grace, and possibly something that is entangling, binding the heroine.”
As a whole, Hasler’s artwork reminds the viewer of what life is—a balancing act; the walking of a line of the roles they have created for themselves. Lisa Hatchadoorian, executive director of the Museum of Art Fort Collins, says, “The importance of Haley Hasler’s body of work stems from her investigation of the role of women in contemporary society. She works from the perspective of mother as the glue that holds the domestic environment together along with the challenges and obsessions of an artistic career. Women have fought hard in this country and around the globe for their basic rights to vote, to own property and to make choices about their bodies and their lives. Hasler utilizes herself as an archetypal template to explore all the different roles for women who choose both family and work as their twin passions.”