30 creative years — Gaylen Hansen's neo-Expressionist style underscores his wit

There is something immensely satisfying about a bison, a fish and a red tulip, all of commensurate size, standing on their heads next to each other.

While this scene obviously cannot occur in real life, it can in art: "Bison, Fish & Tulip," one of 41 large-scale artworks in "Gaylen Hansen: Three Decades of Paintings" at the Salt Lake Art Center through May.

This whimsical exhibit introduces viewers to an outlandish mise-en-scene where clusters of incongruous characters interact in the most unexpected and visually peculiar ways.

Hansen's world is populated by an assortment of animals, insects, fish and a recurrent bearded frontiersman named Kernal Bentleg. The paintings, executed in his spontaneous, raw, neo-Expressionist style (reminiscent of Phillip Guston and Susan Rothenberg) — together with his employment of distortion of scale — are powerhouses of design, figure/ground relationship, color, line and texture.

Born in Garland, Utah, in 1921, Hansen spent his early years working on his grandparents' farm.

"I held the reins on horse-drawn wagons and farm machinery," Hansen writes in the exhibit's 120-page accompanying catalog. The artist also rode saddle horses and worked with cows, sheep, goats, pigs, dogs, cats, geese, ducks, chickens and pigeons, all characters that would eventually inhabit the riotous terrain of his future canvases.

At 17, he moved to Salt Lake City to live with his father. There he attended West High School and frequently skipped class to paint watercolors along the Jordan River.

In 1939, the artist moved to Los Angeles to live with his mother. There he enrolled at the Otis Art Institute for two years before returning to Salt Lake City. Back in Utah, Hansen attended the Art Barn School of Fine Arts.

After receiving an undergraduate degree from Utah State University, Hansen studied at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, on a scholarship. He completed his master's in fine arts in 1953.

In 1957, Hansen moved to eastern Washington where he taught art for 25 years at Washington State University, Pullman.

By the mid-1970s, he decided to give up trying to follow current art trends and focus instead on subjects found within the confines of his 10-acre yard in Palouse, Wash.

In the catalog's opening essay, exhibition curator Keith Wells states that Hansen has a "spectacular affinity for all of the creatures, and even the most banal objects, that inhabit the world around him." According to Wells, the artist's paintings are endearing because Hansen depicts the animals with such affectionate vitality.