Deann Stein Hasinoff: Catching smoke

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Deann Stein Hasinoff, "Weight," 2020

digital drawing

Deann Stein Hasinoff: Catching smoke

“The bright side of the planet moves towards darkness

And the cities are falling asleep, each in its hour,

And for me, now as then, it is too much.

There is too much world”

– Czeslaw Milosz

The Separate Notebooks 

We are complex beings, and much of what occurs internally impacts our sense of self and our interactions with the world. The digital art by Deann Stein Hasinoff, a well-known, Edmonton based abstract artist, centres on making the invisible visible: emotions, experience, and the inner workings of the body and the mind.

Catching smoke is a series of digital drawings and text-based art about anxiety. The artist’s intention is to give this entity a visual form, having lived with its to varying degrees of severity her entire life. As Stein Hasinoff says, “… In giving it a shape, I hoped to also better understand it. It is always present, a constant noise, yet when I focus my attention on it, it disperses like smoke …”.

The artist has utilized automatic drawing to bring this series to life: a bridge between the unconscious and the conscious self. Using words more overtly in this art was a goal and, as Stein Hasinoff states, “…for me they are a powerful impetus in creating and important in telling the story of a piece …”. Working in series allowed the artist to build an abstracted visual narrative on this topic. Her own life experiences along with song lyrics, music, books, blogs, podcasts, and film provided additional source of inspiration for her new series of work, while digital applications allowed the artist to create art in spite of her severe sensitivities to traditional art making materials.

The artist came to understand the power of art with her work on another series all exits look the same, which focused on developing and living with chronic illness. It eventually led Stein Hasinoff to a place of acceptance with her new life. Catching smoke is the next step in that journey. As Stein Hasinoff concludes, “…My hope is it will resonate with others living similar experiences, and in a small way contribute to normalizing conversations regarding mental health”.

Artist Biography

Deann Stein Hasinoff is an abstract artist using various digital applications to create her work. After developing severe sensitivities, Stein Hasinoff was unable to continue with traditional art materials and began to explore digital art making. She draws inspiration for her work from life’s challenges, originally influenced by her work with adults with brain injury and then by her own experiences in developing and living with chronic illness. Inspired by the nature near her home, she is beginning to explore photography and abstraction.

Stein Hasinoff’s formal education is in Speech Language Pathology, receiving her Master’s degree from the University of Alberta in 1999. She began taking community art classes in 2008. Stein Hasinoff received her Certificate in Visual Arts with Distinction from the Faculty of Extension at the University of Alberta in June 2018.

Her solo show all exits look the same was featured in the Upstairs Gallery of the ArtPoint Gallery and Studios Society in Calgary, AB in February 2018. Her work was also a part of Visual Arts Alberta/CARFAC’s Ten Voices 2017 group show, #YEGCANVAS 2016, and Latitude 53 Gallery’s Incubator group exhibition in 2015. Stein Hasinoff was published in the juried artist pages of aceartinc.’s Paper Wait Vol. 17, Contemporary Art Writing. Deann Stein Hasinoff resides and works in Edmonton, Alberta.

NOTE: Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004) was a Polish-American poet, prose writer, translator, and diplomat. Regarded as one of the great poets of the 20th century, he won the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature. In its citation, the Swedish Academy called Milosz a writer who “voices man’s exposed condition in a world of severe conflicts”.