Impressionistic, Romantic, Lyrical, Nostalgic, these are all terms used to describe the oil paintings by Robert Hagan.  Label his style anyway you want but you still end up with glowing terms for his art.

Hagan's technique is sure and strong.  He selects his subjects from everyday life in a variety of themes.  Images of children fossiking about in a shallow lake, fathers and sons fishing off a beach, hardy drovers working the cattle or resting by a campfire, these are the worlds described by Hagan brush.  Not a breath of self-indulgent angst or political controversy to be seen anywhere.

The large fishing and droving subjects satisfy with their pictorial narrative while close investigation of the painting's surface reveals the artist's confidence with colour and brush work.  Hagan may be perpetuating the myth of outback hard yakka and coastal plenty but so what!  He is also perpetuating the virtue of strong painting skills underscored by good drawing and compositional design.  Not to mention the ability of the artist to see and articulate the different effects light has on the subject.  This artist can emulate light in almost every manifestation - sunlight through dust or sea spray, fire light, moonlight, evening at the ocean's edge, and high noon on a summer's day.

Hagan is able to capture the sense of a broad vista in the smallest of landscape paintings as well as create total intimacy in the large works of children.  He gives us accessible images, pictures of a world we want to relate to, yet large passages of his paintings consist of abstract mark making.  For example in Last Light a boy and girl stand knee deep in a pond in an ideal environment.  The top half of the painting is executed in an impressionist manner but from the waterline down to the bottom edge of the canvas, what we read as the reflection of the children in the water is actually a beautiful collection of short brush strokes in a myriad of related colours.  I would love to see Hagan develop this side of his skill even further as it reveals the artist's real joy is in the painting - not the picture.