Artist Biography & Facts

Dennis Hare

Dennis Hare (b August 29, 1946 Glendale, California- d. March 10, 2024)

Dennis Hare, over the course of 40 years as a painter, has earned a reputation as an artist of renown.  He is most often associated with the Bay Area Figurative tradition.  To achieve his signature textured canvases he often employs, assemblage and mixed media.  Hare is a social painter.  Much of his work depicts a real passion for human connectedness and human relationship.

Hare was greatly influenced by the Society of Six and the Bay Area Figurative Movement.  In 1989, Charles Campbell of the Charles Campbell Gallery in San Francisco, bought Hare’s entire collection of work and represented the artist for over 10 years.  Hare was being associated and showing with Bay Area Figurative artists of note.  He exhibited widely in solo and group gallery shows, showing with Nathan Olivera, David Park, Elmer Bischoff, Joan Brown, Stephan DeStabler, Richard Diebenkorn and Manuel Neri. New York Gallerists Salander O’Reilly and Allan Stone participated in this inclusion.

In 1992, Hare was greatly influenced after seeing an Eva Hess exhibition at the Robert Miller Gallery in New York.  A fascination with assemblage and mixed media ensued.  He greatly admired and was influenced by Antonio Tapies and Anslem Keifer as well.  Today, Hare paints both figuratively and abstractly.  He sculpts as well. “I feel like a musician who learns a new instrument…you never put them away, they become vehicles for change and experimentation. I want to be free from any labeling of my work.” In a 2007 “Art Works” cover article on Hare titled: “Dennis Hare: No Compromise”, Editor Erin Clark wrote: “Hare is one of the most provocative artists around today”.  Peter Selz, Professor Emeritus History of Art, University of California Berkeley, wrote: (catalog essay: “Dennis Hare: Without Restraint” Bakersfield Museum of Art 2015) “his works pulsate and vibrate, pulling the viewer into his web.  They require one to participate, to search and search for patterns, for familiarity, and cause one to seek reasons why we choose to relate to the world around us in the way we do.”

Hare has had numerous solo and group shows.  Museum shows include Pasadena Museum of California Art, Bakersfield Museum of Art, Bolinas Museum and Los Gatos Museum.

Museum Collections:  
Oakland Museum of California, Oakland California
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento California
Laguna Art Museum, Laguna California
Bakersfield Museum of Art, Bakersfield California
Hilbert Museum of California Art, Orange California
Bolinas Museum, Bolinas California
The Art Museum of Los Gatos, Los Gatos California

Permanent collections of:

1. UCI ( University of California Irvine) Institute and Museum of California Art
2. A.K.Smiley Library Redlands California
3. University of Nevada Reno
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Hare’s work is in many private collections: Gerald Buck Collection, Morgan Flagg Collection, Tom Weisel, Lorna Meyer, Tom and Kat Steyer, The Charles and Glenna Campbell Collection, Paul Thiebaud, John Modell, JoAnn McGrath, Morten Lauridsen, Peter Blake, Pacific Club: Newport Beach.
Hare was born in 1946 in Glendale California.  Hare’s father, Frederick, was a photographer and a writer.  His mother, Arline, was an interior designer.  Hare’s only sibling, Kathy McPherson, was an accomplished Tole painter and wrote several books on the subject.  Oliver Hare, paternal grandfather, was an artist, photographer and cellist; and maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Harlan, was an artist.  Both parents traveled extensively through Central America and Mexico, producing short films documenting the culture.  Arline worked for many years resurrecting the 1842 “Adobe House” in Yucaipa California, culminating in it’s designation as a Historic California Landmark.  The “Adobe House” was in the neighborhood of the Hare’s residence in Yucaipa where Dennis was raised.  The Hares kept, for over 20 years, a small winter beach residence in Ensenada, a small coastal town in Mexico.  Hare spent intermittent months of seclusion painting there.  He spent later years living in Mexico.  Hare’s art reflects these strong early influences.

Hare exhibited early artistic promise but resisted parental encouragement.  He had a passion for sports.  Hare graduated San Diego State University where he was a member of the baseball and volleyball teams.  His passion became concentrated in volleyball.  In 1974 Hare won the World Beach Volleyball Championship.  He was inducted into The Beach Volleyball Hall of Fame in 2010.  He wrote the first book on the subject; “The Art of Beach Volleyball”. While illustrating the book he started sketching and painting in watercolors. At this time he went to the see Phillips Collection at the DeYoung Museum and was very taken with one work in particular, VanGough’s “Entrance to the Public Gardens at Arles”, he made a conscious decision to devote his life to art.  Van Gogh’s work has inspired him throughout his career.

Working solely in watercolors in 1984, Hare moved to Mexico to immerse himself in art.  He became a member of the National Watercolor Society in 1984.  In 1987 he returned from Mexico.  He was encouraged by Millard Sheets when he decided to paint in oils.  He traveled to Europe, Amsterdam in particular, to study as many Van Goghs and masters as possible.

The early influences of his parent’s passion for Mexican culture as well as his own teenage and adult experiences living in the country became evident in his work.  For a time, bright colors and cultural group scenes ran throughout his work.  The beach also held a fascination for the artist; the coastal light and groups of people “in communion” became a favorite motif.

© The essay herein is the property of The Dennis Hare Trust administered by Higbee and Associates and is copyrighted.  It may not be reproduced in whole or in part, without written permission from The Dennis Hare Trust.