"Gaylen Hansen paints tall tales and mythic quests. He transforms the gentle landscape of the Palouse area of eastern Washington into a world that is variously mysterious, dangerous, surprising, and comical. The Kernal, an impassive Western gentleman and the artist's alter ego, rides through this world, encountering gargantuan grasshoppers, monstrous trout, and fragrant tulips. He is an explorer and seeker, part Meriwether Lewis, part Don Quixote.".

"Hansen's exaggerated narratives are informed by his childhood in rural Utah, where the artist farmed and broke horses along with adults, and by his keen observations as an astute naturalist. The formal strength of his work derives from the decades he spent as an abstract painter and his intense investigations of composition as a professor at Washington State University in Pullman.".

"Vicki Halper's essay chronicles previously unpublished biographical details and traces Hansen's development from abstractionist to fabulist. In clear language, with multiple quotations from the artist and colleagues, Halper illuminates the sources, iconography, and poetry of Hansen's imagery."--BOOK JACKET.