About the Artist

Biography:

Hans Quinonez was born in California and continues to reside there in Huntington Beach.   

 

He loves the outdoors and enjoys surfing, swimming, hiking and camping.  

From an early age, he had an innate ability to draw and was always drawn toward the arts. 

When he was in middle school, he learned the fundamentals of oil painting techniques and process at Bergeron Art School in Huntington Beach. 

He served as a lifeguard at Huntington City Beach, where he was a tower guard, junior lifeguard instructor and rescue boat deckhand.  

During his college years, he fulfilled a desire to wander and explore by traveling through the South Pacific, Europe, and eventually settled on the Hawai'ian island of Kaua'i for several years. 

While there, he began painting en plein air. 

Painting incredible natural beauty on remote beaches was largely a solitary pursuit. 

 

In 1986, attended a traveling exhibition titled “Russia: The Land, The People” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

 

As part of Gorbachev’s perestroika policy, works of art that had never left the Soviet Union (now Russia) traveled to the United States as part of a cultural exchange.  The exhibit included 19^th century landscape paintings by the Russian “Circle of the Itinerants”, a group of artists whose mission was to travel and capture their countryside in paint.   The exhibit introduced artists like Levitan, Shishkin, Repin, Kramskoi, Surikov, Serov, Nesterov and others to the United States for the first time. 

 

Seeing these works left a lasting impression. 

 

He then traveled to Europe, visiting museums and lingering in Paris for several weeks, immersing himself in the works at the Louvre, Musee D’Orsay, the Centre Pompidou and others. 

 

While in Paris, painted en plein-air on the streets, which was a learning experience he had never encountered painting alone on Kaua’i. 

 

“As soon as I opened my French Easel to paint, a crowd surrounded me!  I had never encountered that before.  People were posing, cameras clicking, people watched my every move.  I was overwhelmed and did some really bad paintings!”

 

"I went to an isolated spot on the waterfront of the Seine with a beautiful view of Notre Dame.  I painted quietly, away from the busy streets.

But it was not to be. 

A tour boat docked next to me and a literal boatload of little French schoolchildren unloaded and swarmed about me.  Dressed in royal blue, they were extremely polite, said 'bonjour!' and made a game of guessing what I would paint next by watching me mix colors on my palette.

I dipped my brush and they cried out...'jaune... bleu...verte!....cet arbre!'  and would point at a tree that matched the green on my palette. 

It was so much fun!

I will carry that experience with me always. I learned to paint around people and enjoy the fun and camaraderie with others during the artistic process."

 

He is also an avid reader with a love of literature, so his heart led him to teaching as a career, where he enjoys helping and inspiring younger generations.    Although he pursued teaching, art was always intertwined with his career, just as art is intertwined with life itself.   

 

He continues drawing and painting for fun and the enjoyment of getting lost and absorbed in the creative process.  Although he often seeks quiet places in the world around him, he enjoys the fun and camaraderie of sharing the artistic process. 

 

 

Statement: 

I believe all humans have an inherent ability to perceive beauty in nature and in art. That recognition reaches deep within us to a quiet place  deeper than we can understand.  Although we may not understand it, we know when we have been touched by beauty, whether communicated through nature or through the artist.  That recognition unites us and brings us to a higher place.

“I see painting as a shared experience and a process. I hope my paintings connect with others and reveal the experiences that inspire that journey through a vocabulary of light and color.”

 

 

Memberships: 

 

Laguna Plein Air Painters Association - artist member

 

California Art Club - associate artist