Aaron Hauck

My recent work is a response to a number of things in my life and past artwork. Like most people who come to New York City, I was in awe of the architecture, the layout of the city, and the physicality of the actual city. On many streets the sky is a narrow sliver, the man made structures have blotted out the sky; it is an amazing place. The areas I have used as locations for my paintings are places I stop on a daily basis. With all of the people, traffic, noise, sensory overload, I wanted to get that one moment when there is an absolute quiet, which is a rare and unique thing. Nothing has happened, people aren’t trying to be quiet, it’s just a kind of pause.

It’s interesting the way the city shapes the morning and afternoon sun. I tried to reduce everything to color/light areas. Tried to keep the paint simple to build a complex arrangement. I also limited the people in the paintings, which is a response to most of my prior work where people fill the picture plane and are the main focus point. I love the technical aspect of painting, and cityscapes lend themselves to tackling a lot of different problems, trying to convey a lot of information through simplicity. I used photographs as reference and spent time looking everyday, trying to see. To me these paintings are between the viewer and the city.

Aaron Hauck was born and raised in Brainerd, Minnesota. He has always been intrigued with the act of drawing and that has led him on a path of art making. Hauck attended Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and moved to New York City in 2005. He currently resides in Queens with his longtime partner and fellow painter Sam French and their two dogs.