Gypset Art ~ Kimberly-Lynn Hanson

There are some of us that are content to stay in one place, and there are others who desire to travel and move about. Gypsetter Kimberly-Lynn Hanson is one of the latter. She finds herself bored when constrained by the confines of monotony. She is a renowned tattoo-artist with a large and loyal following, and she is the embodiment of the gypset lifestyle.

Hanson draws artistic inspiration from both her travels around the globe and her hometown. Growing up on the isolated prairies of Alberta, Canada, she first felt the pangs of wanderlust and knew she needed to explore the world to pursue her dreams.

Kimberly-Lynn Hanson describes her art “like pages from an old picture novel with the words missing, I use images that play very strongly with themes of bold adventure and truth.” Kimberly’s pieces are deep and rich in both their materials and the artistic process. You can feel Hanson’s personal history come through in each piece of her work. Hanson remarks, “I want to keep the characters I have found alive. I want people to acknowledge that timeless romance and priceless treasures lay abundantly all around us.” Hanson’s charcoal creations are the perfect balance between intricacy and simplicity. Their simple color schemes contrast with the beautifully captured details and movement, breathing life into the subject.

Each frame that borders her amazing art is hand-crafted. She tears wood down herself from a nearly one-hundred-year-old barn located  in her hometown of Alberta. Hanson describes the process: “I design and handcraft each frame individually from different combinations of hand tooled tin, genuine leather, Victorian crown moulding, and almost century old Albertan barns I take the time to tear down myself. Most of the frames center around a main barn wood design. Once built, the barn wood is then charred, framing it in the very element the drawings themselves are made of (charcoal).” Each frame is handcrafted to work in concert with the charcoal drawings.

Hanson established herself in her hometown of Alberta and opened a private, appointment-only tattoo studio that flourished. Inspired by both the solitude of her Alberta home and the hustle and bustle of cities like New York City, Hanson also created these large charcoal works that have been featured in her gallery.

Kimberly-Lynn Hanson (left) during the New York show in December.

Hanson had her works featured in her premier solo exhibition in Brooklyn, New York where she had 11 works shown (sized up to six feet in length!). She was also  featured in the Red Bull Show in Toronto, where she added four new frame designs and ten more works to her collection.

Kimberly-Lynn Hanson continues to lead a gypset lifestyle and spends anywhere from days to months at a time in cities like Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, San Francisco, New York and Hong Kong.

“What I have is a perfectly suited lifestyle for someone that is hungry for every experience from life. It takes care of me. It keeps me nourished, motivated, and excited to make things.”