Ms. Hanlon, whose work has been compared to that of Edward Hopper, creates "urban landscapes which quietly exude atmosphere". She draws inspiration for her art from the Old Masters, especially from their use of Sacred Geometry or dynamic symmetry, as a compositional tool.
Hanlon received her BFA in Painting in 1976 from Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA in Painting in 1997 from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, where she has been part-time faculty since 1997. In past years, her work has received many first place awards, including the 1996 Art for Parks Sake $1000 First Place Scholarship, and (2) Academy of Art College Faculty Choice awards.
Her 1997 MFA thesis exhibition, entitled "Home Street Home", was attended by Mayor Willie Brown, as well as the news media, and raised almost $1500 for the Coalition on Homelessness. She has been instrumental in organizing major fundraising auctions for the Coalition in the fall of 1999, 2001 and 2002, each of which cleared $15,000 to $20,000 to benefit services for the homeless community.
Earlier in the year she received an Honorable Mention in the Berkeley Art Center Members Showcase 2006 and was juried into the Arts on Fire X exhibition by Larry Rinder. One of her paintings was juried into the 13th Annual Coos Bay Museum Maritime exhibition this summer, receiving the Port of Coos Bay Commissioner's Award and her work may be seen at the Collector's Gallery of the Oakland Museum. Three of her urban landscapes were selected as finalists in the Landscape category of the Artist's Magazine 23rd Annual Art Competition, published in the December 2006 issue. She received a Juror's Award from Karen Kienzle, curator of the DeSaisset Museum, in the 2006 Bay Area Annual at the Sanchez Art Center. She was in a group invitational traveling exhibit entitled "Intimate Landscape" at the Winfield Gallery in Carmel, CA and the Mary Porter Sesnon Gallery at UC Santa Cruz through January 2007. She was selected as a finalist in the Richmond Art Center Members show to be part of the Members Showcase 2007 in Sept/October. She had a second show that summer with Mark Reynolds at the Atrium Gallery in San Francisco, combining her narrative paintings with his geometric drawings.
In 2008, she was in many shows including the Coos Art Museum 15th Annual Maritime Exhibition in which she won the Best in Show award for one of her oil tanker paintings. She was again selected as a finalist in the Artist Magazine 25th Annual Art Competition and was featured in Competition Spotlight in the September 2009 issue. Beginning in February 2009, her urban homeless painting called Third Street Corridor was part of an catalogued invitational three year traveling exhibition entitled "Hobos to Street People: Artists' Responses to Homelessness From the New Deal to the Present" which toured museums and educational venues in the state of California, starting with the California Historical Society in San Francisco. The show was also displayed in museum venues in Colorado.
The artist relocated to southern Oregon in 2012 and has continued to exhibit her work with her first solo museum exhibition in 2022 at the Coos Art Museum in Coos Bay, Oregon. The show focused on the climate impacts of fire and global warming and was entitled "Anthropocene Legacy." (see statement here)
Ms. Hanlon conducted educational and technical seminars on paint, color and art materials for
Winsor & Newton at colleges and universities around the Bay area and in the Pacific Northwest from 1998 through 2015. She also visited colleges and universities in British Columbia before she retired from that teaching job.
