Tom Hannan (1927-2000) American, Abstract Oil on Canvas. Signed in the lower middle. Abstract expressionist work featuring bold gestural strokes of colors including red, green, black and yellow. The composition is dynamic and energetic, with forms overlapping and interplaying with one another. Proceeds from this sale will benefit students at the Ringling College of Art & Design.

Overall Size: 50 x 41 in. 

Sight Size: 49 1/4 x 40 in. 

Frame Thickness: 1 3/4 in. 

#4250 . 
Tom Hannan studied painting at The Hans Hofmann School in the 1950’s. While he exhibited his paintings at the artist-run James Gallery in New York City, he became a jazz aficionado and designed album covers for the jazz record labels Prestige, Columbia, Blue Note, Bethlehem, Jubilee and Roulette, among others. Hannan's designs incorporated his own paintings, drawings, typographical arrangements, and photographs of musicians taken at the Rudy van Gelder recording studio in Hackensack, N.J. He also collaborated with the experimental photographer Scott Hyde and with illustrator Tomi Ungerer. Hannan's cover designs, along with those of his peers Reid Miles and John Hermansader, have been published in several anthologies devoted to jazz album cover art.

Tom set up a graphic design studio in Guilford, Vermont, after he and his wife Alison bought a house there in 1959. To deliver work on tight deadlines to clients in New York, Hannan would drive two miles down Packer Corners Road to meet a UPS truck on its morning trip north along Weatherhead Hollow Road, destination Brattleboro, and pick up a package containing components for an album cover paste-up. He immediately returned to his studio to finish the paste-up in time to make a second trip down the hill that afternoon to meet the UPS truck on its way back to New York. Musician members of the Vermont Jazz Center in Brattleboro honored Tom Hannan with a performance during a memorial gathering at the Hannan home in 2001.