31 Jul Rising Star

Anyone coming face to face with Charles Young, a recent portrait by Idaho-based artist Aaron Hazel, could not doubt that they’ve encountered a formidable man, painted in a bravura style that sets right the subject’s woefully unsung place in American history. Born a slave in Ohio in 1864, the penultimate year of the American Civil War, Young was a child musical prodigy on the piano and violin and graduated with honors from high school, where he gained proficiency in French and German. In 1889, Young became one of the first two Black graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, attained the rank of lieutenant in the U.S. Cavalry’s all-Black 10th Regiment — the famed “Buffalo Soldiers” — and went on to head the military sciences department at Ohio’s Wilberforce College, one of America’s 107 Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

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Those impressive facts, however, don’t even begin to demonstrate his impact on the American West. In 1903, President Teddy Roosevelt appointed Young, then not quite 40 years old, to become the first African American superintendent in the nation’s barely three-decades-old National Park System, putting him in charge of General Grant (now part of Kings Canyon) and Sequoia parks in California, where he oversaw crews that literally paved the way for visitors to stand in awe among the nation’s tallest, oldest trees. He then returned to military duty, leading troops in Haiti, Mexico, the Philippines, and Liberia, and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1916, becoming the first man of his race to achieve this distinction.

Knowing even those basic facts, no proud student of the nation’s past could fail to wonder why Young’s name is not more widely known. Which is precisely why Hazel chose to portray him. “I like to focus on historical subjects who are lesser known,” says the painter, who typically presents his figures in isolation against abstracted, boldly colored backgrounds. “There’s something about painting them in solitary space that seems more impactful, inviting viewers to create their own narratives.”

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Today, at the age of 41, Hazel has undeniably created his own personal narrative as one of the rising art stars of the Mountain West and is represented by some of the region’s top galleries. This past March, as he has in previous years, he served on the jury committee for Great Falls, Montana’s Out West Art Show, which draws artists and collectors from across the region. On June 13 and 14, he was featured in A Weekend With Aaron Hazel at Manitou Galleries in Santa Fe, displaying recent works and giving a painting demonstration while chatting with visitors. On September 13, he’ll be a participant in the always popular quick draw and auction on the Jackson Town Square, a highlight of Jackson Hole’s Fall Arts Festival in Wyoming. His works also find prominent display in galleries located in Bozeman and Whitefish, Montana; Coeur d’Alene and Sun Valley, Idaho; and Whistler, British Columbia.

Despite — or perhaps because of — such a bounty of recognition and the requisite travels across the West that accompany it, most days find Hazel hard at work in the studio he converted from the garage of his home in a quiet neighborhood 12 minutes from downtown Boise, Idaho, the city where he was born and lovingly raised by his parents. “I replaced the garage door with accordion-style windows that bring in light and open up for fresh air, then added a little fireplace and covered all the walls from floor to ceiling with paintings,” describes Hazel. “It’s a very fun little art space.”

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Hazel’s talents, both artistic and academic, were recognized as early as kindergarten. “I liked to draw houses and my favorite basketball players, like Charles Barkley, David Robinson, and Patrick Ewing” — his love of the sport was fostered by his dad, who’d been on the varsity team at Boise State — “and I was pretty advanced at spelling words. I remember my teacher would show my drawings to the first-grade teacher,” he adds with a modest chuckle. “So, I gained confidence in art pretty quickly, and I was put in the gifted and talented program.”

Along with his parents and teachers, another key source provided early encouragement as well: his mom’s oldest brother, Dan Barsness, a painter of romantic realist landscapes and figurative works, whose four-decades-old framing business in Filer, Idaho Hazel now owns and runs. “Practically from birth, I thought my uncle was so cool, and I still own and cherish a bunch of his paintings,” says Hazel.

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In his uncle’s home, he also grew enthralled with the works of another artist, who would ultimately play a major role in his career: Robert Moore, a renowned, Idaho-based Impressionist painter of treescapes and landscapes, who often bought frames from Barsness.

Hazel continued taking art classes through middle school, but his interests broadened. “Though I knew I always wanted to paint, I felt that if I really put my mind to it, I could do anything — whether becoming an attorney or an NBA star.” By high school, he’d grown to 6 feet, 4 inches in height, earned a starting spot on the varsity basketball team, won election to student government, and served as a peer mediator at his school. Those achievements ultimately led to “a basketball-slash-academic scholarship” as a business major at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington — “which turned out not to be a good fit for me basketball-wise, so I transferred on the same scholarship to Whitman College in Walla Walla, joining the basketball team there and switching to an art major.” He even sold two paintings there for the very first time — “abstracts very inspired by the German painter Gerhard Richter, one to a professor and one to my grandma” — in a pregame exhibition held in a room in the college gymnasium.

After graduating, Hazel moved to Seattle and, seeking work as an advertising creative director, enrolled in classes at the Seattle School of Visual Concepts. Meanwhile, to pay his bills, he took a job tending bar at Joey, an upscale restaurant and lounge in the affluent suburb of Bellevue. He also accepted an offer from his uncle, who traded frames with Moore in exchange for Hazel to attend one of his painting workshops in 2012. “It was so illuminating for me, validating and clarifying the thoughts I had in my head about process, shapes, values, and structure,” explains Hazel. “I felt like I had an ally in Robert from the jump.”

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Over the years, Hazel studied regularly with the painter, eventually transitioning from applying paint with brushes to using palette knives as Moore does in his richly textured works. More recently, he began assisting Moore in the intensive group workshops he offers both at his home studio in Burley, Idaho and at the Scottsdale Artists’ School.

For his part, Moore found an admirable talent and kindred spirit in Hazel. “Every individual stroke of paint Aaron makes looks dynamic and interesting, with harmonious colors,” says Moore, “and he uses them in progressions of color that strengthen and confirm his designs to make beautiful paintings that are also powerful statements.”

While he was still working at Joey in 2013 and 2014, Hazel’s life as a painter experienced an unexpected surge of activity thanks to the Seattle Seahawks’ phenomenal football season and their February 2, 2014, Super Bowl victory. Several players frequented the Bellevue restaurant and lounge, and word got around that the bartender, who loved talking about sports, was also a painter. A portrait he did of the team’s wide receiver, Golden Tate, was posted on Instagram and quickly led to commissions from other Seahawks and players from other teams.

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Meanwhile, he also began exploring other subjects, including Native Americans, Black cowboys, and Western wildlife. The Seahawks’ heartbreaking loss in the 2015 Super Bowl led Hazel to shift even more definitively toward those images, which continue to hold meaning for him today. By his 30th birthday, he’d become a full-time painter.

His career transition was made possible through growing recognition and support from respected galleries across the West. “Whether he’s painting figurative subjects or wildlife, Aaron makes each person or animal their own individual,” observes gallerist and painter Carrie Wild, co-owner of Gallery Wild in downtown Jackson. “We love watching people in our gallery stand back and look at his pieces and then move forward and get close to them — they’re just so full of intriguing color and texture.” Indeed, appreciating one of Hazel’s works in the real world can turn into a sort of intricate courting dance. “It’s almost like making a friend or welcoming a family member, 
developing a unique relationship with the painting,” Wild says. And she finds just as much to appreciate in the artist himself. “Aaron is full of energy, and he’s funny. He has all these ideas bouncing around, and he puts that energy and excitement into his work.”

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That riveting intensity is evident whether the work in question depicts a female Western stunt rider, as in Stand Alone; the pair of young siblings smartly dressed alike for church, perhaps, or the first day of school, in Wing; or the sweetly intimate portrayal of a red fox squinting in the sunlight in Spice. “I approach all these from my own point of view,” says Hazel, “whether it’s people who’ve been underrepresented or subjects that have been painted forever. And I take pride in the fact that the way I see them is seeping into the viewer’s consciousness, bringing them along with me.”

From his base in Marin County, California, Norman Kolpas writes about art, architecture, travel, dining, and other lifestyle topics for magazines, including Western Art & Architecture and Southwest Art. He’s a graduate of Yale University and the author of more than 40 books, the latest of which being Foie Gras: A Global History. Kolpas teaches in The Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension, which named him Outstanding Instructor in Creative Writing.