About

Lau Haaning (b. 1945, Copenhagen, Denmark) is a painter and photographer whose practice bridges narrative abstraction, psychological inquiry, and a highly personal exploration of color, form, and memory. Raised in Copenhagen in a home saturated with the smell of turpentine and the presence of his father’s canvases, Haaning began painting as a child. Though he never attended formal art school, he developed his practice through sustained mentorships and apprenticeships, studying intensively with artists Winston Hewitt and Jim Bertram, and engaging in decades-long photographic fieldwork that shaped his understanding of composition, light, and visual storytelling.

Before dedicating himself fully to art, Haaning trained in psychotherapy and drug-and-alcohol counseling—an experience that profoundly informs his work. His paintings often examine the roots of violence, trauma, and transformation, drawing on thinkers such as existential philosopher Martin Heidegger, Søren Kerkegaard, Alice Miller and Jack Spicer, whose notion of “dictation” (the artist as receiver of transmissions) continues to guide Haaning’s intuitive approach to the canvas. Influences ranging from Vincent Van Gogh, Edvard Munch, and Paul Klee to COBRA artists, Abstract Expressionism, and the New York School animate his visual language, while philosophical affinities with Marcel Duchamp and John Cage shape his acceptance of accident and spontaneity.

Over a career spanning multiple decades and geographies—from Laguna Beach’s Pacific edge, to the forests of Lake Tahoe, and now the vast New Mexico horizon—Haaning has developed an expansive and varied practice. His work ranges from paintings that confront generational trauma and moral contradiction to rigorously composed explorations of color, form, and line. Haaning’s work reminds us that art is not merely made, but confronted—one truth, one color, one line at a time.