Pointilism of Phil Hansen has many points indeed! One of them, surely dominant among the first impressions that locks our attention to his work, is his doubtlessly great artistic gift easily recognized at the early age of all true talents, born genius of artistic expression who always seems like playing with it, jiggling on the rope and exploring borders with their art, but what else that play may involve? From the comments of many reviewer of his art through video sharing and his website comment pages, we may see that it is refreshing, inspiring, amusing, reminding people to some favorite artist from the past, and it is also very much focused to the issues of the current political circumstances and social environment, as well as for the most personal matters of collaboration, like for instance the wheel into which the most striking moments of life of many people all over the world were recorded by artist’s hand, making his own rotating portrait.

Who is Phil Hansen? It is hard to explain and fathom, as in the wide field of the art anything and anyone can go as the art and artist today, but here we see a man with the vision that is grasping far and wide into the world of human explorations and see how is he becoming (from one episode of creation to the other) a “vision accomplished” hero: a man with the artist’s eye and hand ready to follow and deliver the rules of any newly created games, however bizarre or touching, hard or intelligent, hilarious or even silly they may appear. Someone commented how seeing him playing with the Rubik’s cube would be interesting to imagine. Surely, this artist is the one who knows how to turn visions from his rich imagination into artistic reality using system of creating and performing his creative games and filling into his own rules of each of them the tissue of the nature, thoughts, feelings, imagination, objects and technologies that are at hand or somewhere around the corner. Each game has its story, and the story is visually recorded, and shared accompanied with the music so good that it hardly can be neglected. This is also a tribute to all who are being happy to play this way and leave a record or a note to the global audience of inquiring minds so to speak.

One of the most important things for me was his ability for fruitful and totally unpretentious collaboration inside and outside the “institutional frames” of what are is and isn't and where its place can be, making the most out of what is given at present in this confusingly abundant world of all rules made to keep us inside strict borders. This artist is crossing these borders and going through the walls of convention (and institutional art) with an ease of a good ghost Casper or imagination of a child that is not making any notice of any borders, dissolving them all in his play except the frame of his own game, but also with mastery of the experienced wizard of pointillism, where we always stay amazed both by the process and artistic vision embodied in the final outcome.

Phil Hansen, we may say is born to be a great painter and he is that all over his body, spirit and mind and he dares to display it by painting with his arms and hands and elbows and feet and also demonstrating to us his thought process and shows us by recording steps of his work how we may feel friendly with our (mostly alienated, trivial, boring or scary) environment playing with the fragments of it, be that pinecones, sand, x-rays and machines that devour all artistic effort into the pieces of grinded trash or be that our own prejudices or images of famous celebrities and political figures and what impact they can have on our mind.

His artistic endeavor and message of his art may seem so touchingly caring, so universally deep and personally moving, but also, for some it can be unbelievably light and playful, spontaneous and easy, cool and seemingly superficial like the finest wrap of invisible irony, as you like it. So take it as you like, if you purchase his paintings you will surely contribute by that gesture to the humanitarian cause, if you observe that idea of being attributed to some cause having a big picture on your mind, you are facing the area of your own freedom and facing the fact how mind liberation is each moment of human life, or life of civilization triggered with the great works of art that are simply born around us.

Some ideas for the exploration of that kind could be: deserts and oceans, words and verses, streets and cities, human and animal’s eyes, and many more that come to mind thanks to this artist whose work we'd spontaneously like to follow sometimes like a child going after the circus leaving the town and sometimes like a serious art connoisseur who wonders about the future of the art and the role of the artist in the world today, putting everything under the magnifying glass.

In the end, without wishing to put his work into any categories and so much refreshed by the overwhelming experience of meeting his art recorded the way (I must compliment too) I wish to give to Phil Hansen, the artist of the boundless imagination, restless spirit, inspiring vision and hardworking limbs a truly big hand!

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See his art at http://www.philinthecircle.com
More about his art at POTW article http://potw.news.yahoo.com/s/potw/23115/strokes-of-genius
Type Phil Hansen in Youtube.com to see his videos