The McDaniel College Department of Art and Art History presents “Interpretations of Place: The Paintings and Drawings of Hans Habeger and Karina Hean” March 7-31 in Peterson Hall’s Rice Gallery. The artist’s reception will be held 7-9 p.m. March 7.

For information and gallery hours, call 410-857-2595.

Habeger and Hean approach the topic of place from two very different perspectives.

Habeger’s unique urban landscapes stretched across a thin horizontal frame capture a moment in time. Each piece takes months of on-site sketching and painting.

“I concentrate on the interaction of light, space, color, form, and line,” Habeger says. “I find this relationship of formal elements throughout an urban environment. I discover it in a grouping of buildings, in the intensity of the changing sunlight on the space, in the movement of an intersection, and in the transitory area of a construction site.”

Karina Hean’s larger-than-life drawings of nature include unexpected natural materials like feathers, branches, ashes, dirt, and decayed trees.

“My drawings are traces of a spiritual, intellectual, and physical exploration of what I consider to be the most vital entity: nature,”
Hean says. “Nature is our source, provider, and limitation. It is the forest, the way a tree branches, and the wind that can push a tree down.
Nature is both a thing and a process. It exhibits order and chaos and exists in a state of extreme interrelatedness and sensitivity. In my life and in my work I derive purpose and direction from the constancy and dependability of change present in nature’s amorphous whole.”

Hean earned her bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from St. John’s College and has studied in Florence and Amsterdam. Hean also holds an MFA from New Mexico State University and is an Associate Professor of Art at Fort Lewis College in Durango, CO.

Habeger, a lecturer at Iowa State University, earned a bachelors degree from the University of Wisconsin and a M.F.A. from Indiana University. He has won many artist awards and grants, and his work has been on exhibit across the country.

McDaniel College, a private four-year college of the liberal arts and sciences, was founded in 1867 as Western Maryland College. Students pursue more than 60 programs of study, including dual majors and student-designed majors. The 1,600 undergraduates and 1,600 graduate students receive personal attention and take advantage of leadership opportunities in the close-knit community, where the average class size is 17 and professors are dedicated mentors. The 160-acre campus is located in Westminster, Md., 30 miles northwest of Baltimore and 56 miles north of Washington, D.C.