ON VIEW 
May 9 – 18, 2024

EXHIBITION OPENING
Thurs, May 9, 5 – 7 pm

Paige Hanson


Paige Hanson graduated with a BFA from Northern Arizona University in 2022 and is currently based just outside of Portland, Oregon. Primarily a painter, Hanson’s work focuses on themes of change, loss, climate anxiety, personal narratives and natural events. Her work is often abstract and translates conceptual concerns into definitive formal considerations of color, form, line and shape. Hanson works in a variety of wet and dry mediums, but has a distinctly painterly sensibility. Her work deals with the primary challenges of abstraction as it relates to contemporary living.

Paige Hanson is a painter who works within a primarily abstract methodology. Her works aim to make note of contemporary life, by highlighting the distinctions between the physical experience and the imagined. Through abstractions, Hanson ruminates on the edges between natural transitions, moments of change and real life events that incite extreme change. The works act as visual conduits to explain both the massive and individual consequences of extreme transition.


The MFA Thesis Exhibition for the Class of 2024 is a multidisciplinary exhibition unified by an urgency each of these MFA candidates expresses for what they see as fundamental to our shared experience of an increasingly disconnected world. With an emphasis on the personal, and at times the anecdotal, the artwork featured by these 12 artists varies in media to include ceramics, installation, painting, performance, photography, printmaking, video, sculpture, and zines. Seen together, these thesis projects hybridize a range of conceptual themes and material approaches as they relate to visual culture, the political landscape, and contemporary art practice. The nature of this work and research demonstrates the caliber and cultural relevance achieved by these graduates of Maine College of Art & Design’s Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art program. Our studio-based curriculum creates a transformative learning experience and is designed to encourage students to follow where their work leads them, supporting them to define a sustainable vision for their own art practice through individualized research, critical analysis, and curatorial experimentation.











Institute of Contemporary Art
at Maine College of Art & Design
522 Congress St. Portland, ME 04101

Gallery Hours:
Wed–Sun, 11:00am–5:00pm,
Thursday, 11:00am–7:00pm