BIO
Born in 1956, Moira Hahn grew up attending Catholic schools
on the east coast. She studied art at The Maryland Institute
College of Art in Baltimore, moving west at the age of 19 to
attend California College of Arts and Crafts (CCAC) in Oakland,
CA.
After earning her BFA, Moira studied Film Graphics (now ‘Experimental
Animation’) for a year at CalArts, in Valencia, CA. She
worked as a studio assistant for Masami Teraoka for five years.
She later freelanced in animation, illustrated books and magazines
for The Pushpin Group, in New York, owned a t-shirt design company,
worked various day jobs, taught occasionally, and showed regularly
at galleries and museums in Los Angeles, Texas, & Hawaii.
Moira returned to school in 1997 to earn an MFA in Art at California
State University, Fullerton. She now teaches full time, and
spends thirty to forty hours a week producing art.
Her interests beyond painting include drawing, printmaking,
sculpture, dogs, wolves, hiking, swimming, reading, science,
cloning, astronomy, cultural anthropology, comparative religions,
Japanese culture, sacred mountains, and dancing.
Art-wise, Moira’s all over the map, inspired by Persian
miniatures, Tibetan Thanka paintings, Japanese Ukiyo-e prints,
Indian animal drawings, and Chinese guardian figures.
In Western art, she’s attracted to the documentary art
of Explorer/ Scientist artists including Martin Johnson Heade,
John James Audobon and Karl Bodmer. Moira’s equally intrigued
by first wave (Blue Rider) German Expressionist relief prints
and portraits by Ingres. She views John Singer Sargent as the
most gifted watercolorist she has studied, with Karl Bodmer
running a close second.
In contemporary art, artists she admires include Don Ed Hardy,
Thomas Woodruff, Chuck Close, Hilary Brace, Tom Knechtel, Sarah
Perry, Hisashi Tenmyouya, Cynthia Evans, Souther Salazar, and
Daniel Du Plessis.
Currently
Miora Hahn exhibits her artwork at Koplin
Del Rio Gallery in LA, and Roq
La Rue, Seattle.
