Don Hazen

Art Brokerage: Don Hazen American Artist: b. 1933. Don Hazen was born in Johnson City, TN on November 1, 1933. Of Dutch-Irish descent, he was reared in a religious atmosphere since his father was a lay minister of the Baptist church. The future artist was the eldest of seven children and grew up in an ambiance devoid of artistic influence. He now recalls with amusement that at the age of eight he occupied himself with drawing on all the neighbors' trash cans with liquid shoe polish. Even that minimal activity was viewed with disfavor for his was a rough neighborhood in which sports were of prime importance and "sissy" was the appellation given to any child who preferred staying home to draw pictures. When he was seventeen Hazen enlisted in the army and served in Japan and Korea. After his discharge in 1955, he enrolled in East Tennessee State University to study engineering. In a short time he realized that engineering was not his field, so he left college, still undecided what career he wished to follow. In 1957 he hitchhiked from Tennessee to Denver. There he met the mural painter Dan Chapin, and it was through Chapin's encouragement that Hazen began seriously considering art as a career. nnTo support himself & pay for his studies under Chapin, he found a job in a defense plant. A year later he was transferred to Orlando, Florida where, in addition to working, he attended classes under Ralph Bagley at the Orlando Institute of Art. Hazen completed a two-year course in fine arts, followed by one year of study with the portrait painter Robert Anderson in his Altamonte Springs studio near Orlando. Hazen felt the time had come to work independently. He had saved enough money to live on for a while and upon the advice of a European friend, he decided to go to Spain. After traveling across southern Europe with stops in Madrid, Ibiza, Nerja & the Canary Islands, he settled in 1963 in a small village near Alicante where he set up a studio in a peasant's house and began painting directly from nature. Listings wanted.