36 Views of Mount Rainier, Madison Beach Summer is a color woodcut created in 2007 by Kristina Hagman. It is pencil signed, dated and editioned 11/25. Madison Beach Summer was printed by the artist on heavy Somerset Satin White wove paper and the image measures 10 x 12 inches. The artist used silver metallic ink which gives a sheen to the water’s surface.
According to her online statement, Hagman moved to the Seattle in 1997 and lived there for fourteen years. The landscape of the Pacific Northwest called to her. She lived a few blocks from the Pacific Asian Museum and visited often. She was inspired by the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai and his 36 View of Mount Fuji. Using the Japanese master as an exemplar, she created 36 Views of Mount Rainier using western oil-based inks.
Madison Park Beach is a public beach on the shore of Lake Washington in Seattle. The beach offers seasonal swimming and has diving boards and a children’s play area. Madison Park is part of a neighborhood but the park and beach are open to all. It is a surprisingly large beach and residents enjoy cooling off in the summer and dining in nearby restaurants.
Kristina Hagman, painter, printmaker, designer, author, teacher, and lecturer, was born in 17 February 1958 in New York City, New York but she grew up in Los Angeles, California. Hagman attended San Francisco State University where she studied dance, psychology and science. After three years of college, she landed a summer acting job in The Sound of Music. Acting was in her blood, her grandmother was stage actress Mary Martin and her father was Larry Hagman of Dallas fame, so she briefly explored acting.
Hagman grew up painting beside her mother and grandmother. She later studied at the DeYoung Museum Art School in San Francisco, California (1977, 1978); the Art Students League, New York (1981,1982); the Graphics Workshop with Ron Pokrasso in Santa Fe (1983); the Santa Fe Institute of Art with Richard Diebenkorn and Nathan Oliveira (1986,1987); the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque (1987-1988); the Santa Fe Institute of Art with Wayne Thiebaud (1990); and the College of Santa Fe, New Mexico (1994, 1995).
Kristina lived in Seattle for fourteen years and created the series, 36 Views of Mount Rainier after being inspired by Hokusai's 36 Views of Mount Fuji. Her woodblock series was exhibited at Pacific Asia Museum in the summer of 2012. Hagman note on her website: Mount Rainier’s iconic image is the very soul of Seattle. Its majesty and scale are beyond Seattle’s impressive man-made structures. The great Japanese woodblock master Hokusai had created “Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji.” Because of him, I was inspired to learn the wood block technique of print making in order to depict the Rainier landscapes in the same medium.
From the Pacific Northwest, Hagman moved in San Monica, California, then to Washington, D.C., and then established her studio in Arlington, Virginia. She has been a member of the California Society of Printmakers, the Seattle Print Arts, and the Los Angeles Printmaking Society, and has an extensive history of exhibitions, both solo and group. Her work is represented in numerous corporate collections, as well as the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe.
