Grace Hager

Grace Hager explores the natural world as a realm of emotional and imaginative possibility.

Engaging the landscape tradition through ceramic sculptures and paintings, Hager's work blends naturalistic forms with bold, often psychedelic color to evoke awe, transformation, and the ungraspable.

In Conversation with Friday Arts

Friday Arts

How did you find your way into art?

Grace Hager

I was a creative child, drawing from an early age, painting, working with my hands. I pursued art in high school but I wasn't really serious about it until I went away to a summer program at the Museum School in Boston. I came back from that program really determined to be an artist.

As a child, I remember spending time at my best friend's home and her mother being very guarded about how much paper I was using. Because I was drawing on all of their printer paper, which as a child I never thought about the expense of that. My parents definitely encouraged me. They are research scientists, but they have always loved art.

Tell us about your formal training.

I attended the Maine College of Art where I earned a BFA in painting. I took six years between undergraduate school and graduate school and returned to Maine College of Art for my MFA in Studio Art. Wanting to be back in Maine was part of that return, it's a real wellspring of inspiration for anybody working with the landscape.

When did you first call yourself an artist?

I know when I became an artist, but I am only just feeling comfortable calling myself an artist and the difference between those two events is about five years. I had gone through a rough moment in my life just before the pandemic and I was spending more time alone. I was rebuilding a painting practice. And then the pandemic hit and we were all thrown into like deep isolation and fear. Painting almost every day at that time was how I got through it, so I think it’s very deep in my identity now. This activity is how I exist in the world and how I make meaning and take care of myself and others, in a way that feels urgent to me.

Organizing my life around this involves a lot of uncertainty, which is sort of like a cliche that you're told in art school. It doesn't really feel real or hit home until you're in it. What that looks like for me is multiple day jobs and some gig work and really doing what I have to so I can clear out and protect studio time. And it is hard work, but it's also truly like one of the things that keeps me joyful and alive. So, I am all in, for sure.

Do you have a mantra or philosophy that guides you?

I am a full-on subscriber to the studio rules written by Sister Corita Kent. I can't remember which rule it is but one of the rules is: the only rule is work. Those rules sort of re-entered my life in grad school at a time where I was already showing up almost daily for my practice so it wasn't really a hard indoctrination for me to get to. Work carries you forward. For me, it's important to consider the work holistically. That work could be watching my favorite TV show or it could be walking on the beach or it could be working all night to light a kiln or stretching a canvas, so I keep that definition as generative as possible.

Who are some artists that you look to for inspiration, and where do you see yourself in the tradition of landscape?

I'm definitely influenced by the post impressionists like—it's almost cliche to say—Van Gogh. Some of those really saturated, almost complimentary palettes create a real optical vibration mapped onto portraits, landscapes, or interiors, which influences the mood of that image. Jumping to a contemporary artist, David Hockney has a similar use of color in the landscape, especially where he might be painting like a Yorkshire road, which might be very verdant and green and then suddenly there's like shocks of purple in amongst the green hedge.

I've always gravitated to romantic landscape painting, but I didn't quite feel comfortable claiming that until recently. There’s Western imagery, like a solitary figure looking out on the landscape by Casper David Friedrich. Asian art has also been an influence, like some of the Chinese ink drawings where the mountains in the mist are the majority of the composition and then there's this diminutive human. Those kinds of images emotionally and thematically resonate for me.

You come from a family of scientists. Can you speak about how that may have influenced your work?

My mom is a biologist and my dad is a biochemist and they both have worked in gene sequencing and cancer research. They deal with observation and research and empirical truth, and knowledge was valued in our household growing up. My work as an artist continues to engage with science and truth, but also invites more of the emotional or subjective reality. I'll also say that they're both avid nature lovers. There was a lot of direct engagement and observation of nature. And my aunt and uncle are field biologists—my aunt studies bugs and my uncle studies birds—so it's a lot of fun to go on a hike with them.

You’ve spoken about your work inspiring “awe” and “the natural world as a realm of possibility”—can you elaborate?

I really love the word possibility. When I'm moving through the world, I want to feel like I have the most possibility. Nature for me is like a salve, it comes in and grounds me but also refreshes me in a way where I feel like I have more possibility. Transformative is another word that continues to influence the studio for me. Currently I'm thinking a lot about abstraction in modes of representation. And so when something transforms, I think nature gives a lot of raw material and formal material that I can recombine to create something that might slip between—branches of a tree, or antlers. I love the fluidity of that, and that also feels quite like magical to me.

Is there a creative failure that you learned from?

I think failure might also be in line for a mantra. Failure is good, but it doesn't make it any less difficult, especially if you don't have a lot of time. Building in time for failure is important. The first freestanding, somewhat life-scale animal sculpture I ever made was a little bit tippy, because building something out of clay on little legs is a technical challenge. And so I was photographing the work on a makeshift table, and the weight of the ceramic piece bowed the table just enough that it fell off the table and shattered. And this was a piece that I'd worked maybe half of a term of grad school, solid, just on this one piece. To have it end up in literal pieces.

I think it's about seeing the worth of making the work in the experience and the learning and not as much tied to the object. Although there is something really lovely about the objects continuing on and accumulating life of their own and interacting with whoever spends time with them.

What do you do when you're not making art?

I have a lot of deadlines this year so it's a lot of making art, but I love to hike. That's one of the things that I really look forward to—as much time outside as possible. Sometimes it can be hard to take that time for myself, but whenever I do it not only makes me feel better but also inevitably almost always gives me ideas that then create the next work.

I'm also interested in narrative and film. I use paint in a way where I don’t want people to be thinking so much about the material, as much as delving into the illusion. Film also offers this sort of unmediated experience that you give yourself to it. You're vulnerable and you believe what's being shown to you through that medium. In the ceramic works, I'm using ceramic but I'm not lavishly celebrating the material, I'm still using it in sort of an illusionistic way.

As filmmakers, we think a lot about what the audience is feeling. What is the feeling or emotion that you want your audience to experience when engaging with your work?

It is that contemplative or emotional in-between space that I'm hoping people will get to. That might be brought on from an experience of awe or positivity. I'm really interested in people living with the work over time. Every opportunity for someone to meet the work is almost like looking at the sunset every day, you're going to have a different experience with that same thing and it might dredge up different things. So I'm hoping my work offers almost like a ringing bell, like a moment to remember or check in, or that invites that kind of reflection in an everyday sphere.

How do you want people experience your work when they live with it in their home?

I'm really happy to have people spend every day with the work. It's like a rolling stone. Like it's going to collect the moss of their lives and enter into their lives. So that's that an ideal outcome for my work. I make meditative objects that invite emotional reflection.

If you had a time machine what would you tell your former self when you were first starting out as an artist?

Do what you love. When you make a decision to pursue a formal education in the arts, you're inviting a lot of voices. I think the younger version of me held very dear to those voices and tried to change my path to make sure that I was being responsive. I continue to tell myself if I love something or something is sticking in my mind or recurring, if it's working for me, it's bound to be working for someone else.

What's the worst day job you've ever had?

I have had so many day jobs, probably almost any that you can think of. Many of them relate back to what I was saying about work, where the boundaries of the studio are quite porous. And so even if I'm cooking someone breakfast, that activity is somehow related or enriches my experience when I return to the studio.

When AI comes for all of us, what words will it use to describe your work?

Color, landscape, awe, opticality or psychedelic. Duality is the other word that I'm dealing with a lot right now.

What does the word Friday mean to you?

Friday is a celebratory final push. You have to work hard to get through your Friday and hopefully enjoy it, but there's always something sweeter on the other side.

About the Artist

Grace Hager (b. 1993, Los Angeles, CA) is an interdisciplinary painter and ceramic sculptor. She received her Master of Fine Arts in 2023 and Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting with a Minor in Art History in 2015 both from Maine College of Art & Design. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States, including at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, ME; Wassaic Project, Wassaic, NY; MEPAINTSME; CT State Gateway Community College, New Haven, CT; Pamplemousse Gallery, Richmond, VA; The Parsonage, Searsport, ME; George Marshall Store Gallery, York, ME; and Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, Boston, MA; among others.

She was recently awarded a partial James Bernard Haggarty Scholarship, a grant from the Belvedere Fund, a project grant from the Puffin Foundation, and is the recipient of a Fellowship in Painting at Vermont Studio Center. She has been an artist-in-residence at Wassaic Project, Maine College of Art & Design, Directangle Press, and Running With Scissors. She currently lives and works in Southern Maine.