Steve Hanks

Steve Hanks (American, 1949–2015) is widely regarded as one of the finest figurative watercolorists of his era — a rare distinction in a medium most artists find unforgiving. Born into a military family in San Diego, he grew up surfing and playing tennis along the Southern California coast, and that lifelong fascination with water, light, and skin would come to define his art. When he was a high-school junior the family moved to New Mexico, the state he'd later call home; after studying at the Academy of Art and the California College of Arts and Crafts in the Bay Area, a developing allergy to oil paint pushed him toward watercolor.

Emotional Realism in Watercolor

Rather than accept the medium's reputation for thin, hurried effects, Hanks taught himself to build washes, edges, and layers with such control that his watercolors rival the depth and luminosity of oils — wet skin, sunlit fabric, and reflected light rendered with near-photographic tenderness. He called his approach "emotional realism," and famously turned his subjects away from the viewer or let backlight wash over them so that the whole figure, not just the face, carried the feeling — what he termed "introspective solitude."

Collecting Steve Hanks

Honored with the National Watercolor Society's Merit Award and the National Academy of Western Art Gold Medal, and repeatedly ranked among America's top-selling artists, Hanks built a devoted national following. His original watercolors are scarce and highly prized; his signed, limited-edition prints — faithful reproductions issued in numbered editions — remain some of the most collected in the country, the accessible way to live with his quiet, luminous vision of the human figure.