George Van Hook - Artist Biography

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Permanent Collection - Showing July 1st - August 31st.

George Van Hook, a talented artist known for his landscape art, was born and raised in Abington, Pennsylvania, a northern suburb of Philadelphia. He began painting very early and immersed himself in the vibrant artistic culture of the region. The family owned a farm in Bucks County, home to the Pennsylvania impressionists, greatly influencing his fine academic training and love for the prosaic landscape. Another significant early influence was the “Brandywine Tradition,” notably the illustrative work of Howard Pyle and the generations of Wyeths. This artistic journey was further enriched by his close association with coastal Maine, where George spent many summers painting in the mid-coast area of Rockland and Rockport Harbor, and on North Haven Island, where his wife’s family owned property adjacent to the famous Boston artist Frank Benson.

George Van Hook's passion for the European tradition also began early. He spent two summers during high school filmmaking throughout France and England, visiting many great museums and solidifying his commitment to becoming a professional artist. After college, he headed to Paris, where he spent nearly a year copying paintings at the Louvre and traveling through France, Italy, and Holland, creating numerous Plein Air paintings. Upon returning to California, he continued to explore the landscape and figure outdoors.

After marriage and starting a family, George returned to the East Coast, eventually settling in Cambridge, NY, a beautiful nineteenth-century village in the Battenkill River Valley. For 28 years, he has painted the Battenkill River in New York and Vermont, capturing the beauty of fall colors, winter snowbanks, spring pastels, and the rich greens of lushly vegetated riverbanks, oxbows, shaded glens, bathers, and fly fisherfolk. His works are part of many prominent fly fishing collections associated with the nearby American Museum of Fly Fishing in Manchester, VT.

Van Hook views his paintings as primarily a visual response to the selected environment, whether landscape, figure, or still life. "I want the color to be beautiful and the drawing firm and secure," he says. The paintings represent a marriage of external and internal forces – what emerges on the canvas should reflect both the beauty of the world and the artist’s most inner response.

As a nationally recognized artist, George Van Hook has won numerous Plein Air competitions and awards across the country for his exceptional oils and watercolors.