Summary

Patrick Hasson shares his journey from being a filmmaker to becoming a full-time artist. He talks about the frustrations of the film industry and how it led him to seek a change. He bought a house in Joshua Tree and transformed it into a colorful, vibrant space, which he rented out on Airbnb. This sparked his interest in painting, and he started creating abstract art using a dripping technique. He eventually ventured into portrait painting, focusing on desert rock musicians. Patrick Hasson is an artist who specializes in creating vibrant and unique portraits using a drip technique. He shares how he discovered this technique and how it has become his signature style. Patrick also talks about his series called Desert Dudes, where he painted portraits of desert rock musicians, and how it led to his first art show. He discusses the challenges he faced during the pandemic and his upcoming series called 1969, which pays homage to classic rock musicians. Patrick invites listeners to his upcoming art show and shares his journey as an artist.

Patrick's Contact

Instagram Here

Patrick's link tree with all the important details about upcoming shows HERE

Danny (00:01.369) All right, Patrick Hassan, welcome to the Highway 62 podcast. Thanks so much for taking some time out. How's everything going today?

Patrick Hasson (00:10.988) Doing okay, man. It's getting a little cooler in the desert, so things are good.

Danny (00:12.716) Awesome.

Yes Yeah, I actually I'm down in Irvine for the summer here, but I was home Day before yesterday came came home for a day to check on the house and all that good stuff and definitely it was starting to feel a little bit better so looking forward to Looking forward to that. So you've got a great art show coming up that we are going to talk a little bit about but you've got a great story on you know, how you became a full -time artist and

I want to hear all about that stuff. give us the, you know, the dime store tour.

Patrick Hasson (00:49.57) Okay, I was a independent filmmaker for about 20 years from the East Coast. Eventually, like most people, made my way to LA 2002. Did, you know, did some films that I wrote and directed. I did a little comedy called Waiting, a horror film called Bloodshed, did some documentaries, but long story short,

That's a tough business as anybody who's been in it. I think for me the most frustrating part of the world of film is film's a very expensive medium. And because of that, you usually need a lot of people to come on board, especially producers. So, you know, unless you're Quentin Tarantino, what happens is the art you're trying to make always gets compromised and

Danny (01:46.072) Yeah.

Patrick Hasson (01:47.084) Which is fine, but what happens, you know, as the budgets start to get bigger and the last film I did had a two million dollar budget, which was really cool, but the producer really kinda came on in the editing process and it just, it destroyed the film, so that was happening with me, you know, very frustrated with that world and I was an alcoholic and pretty...

Danny (02:04.92) Mm

Patrick Hasson (02:16.31) pretty bad drug addicts, it was kind of this perfect circle of wasn't happy with filmmaking, my life was out of control, and then there was a period there where I just, know, most of the times I would freelance as an editor to make money. At that time, I was editing adult films. I had cut for Digital Playground, Playboy, blah, blah, which is kind of a mind fuck, you know, like.

Danny (02:32.014) Mm -hmm.

Patrick Hasson (02:45.41) You know, some people hear that and they're like, that must be wonderful. And I'm like, trust me, there are things that you do not want to see eight hours a day, five days a week. So I just kind of felt it.

Danny (02:57.293) Well, plus the amazing dialogue you've got to work around when you're editing.

Patrick Hasson (03:01.557) my god.

I mean, I actually shot a documentary about that world, which was cool, but I just, was done, so I checked into a rehab 2014 and I got out, you I was living in a shitty apartment in LA and I had somehow bought a house in Joshua Tree. I bought a little drug house.

Danny (03:10.488) Yeah.

Patrick Hasson (03:31.906) for 73 grand and the whole reason I started coming to Joshua Tree to kind of turn the story back is when I got to LA 2002 I'm reading the LA Weekly and on the cover was it was Josh Homme and Nick Oliveri from the Stone Age and I was like huh who's this? So I knew nothing about Desert Rock so always a big music fan read this article and it they talked about you know Chris Goss and Brant Bjork and

Danny (03:46.275) Mm -hmm. Sure.

Patrick Hasson (04:00.874) Mary O 'Lally and it talked about these generator parties and Kaius and all these desert bands and you know what really got me was like these guys were just kind of doing their own thing you know especially like a

Danny (04:09.751) Hmm

Danny (04:14.647) Yeah. Yeah, I've actually, I actually played with Nick a couple times. Yeah, I filled, I played drums in face to face as my full time band, but I filled in for the Dwarves a couple times. So I did a bunch of rehearsals with Nick. I don't think we did shows together, but he came down to my studio down at Costa Mesa and we did rehearsals for a pre -production stuff we were doing for a new Dwarves album.

Patrick Hasson (04:20.939) Really?

Patrick Hasson (04:29.218) Nice. Nice.

Danny (04:44.343) that I was hoping to play on, but I was out on tour and then, you know, they always had Josh Freeze play on there and if you can get Josh to play on your record, you're gonna probably pick him over me anyway. But it was still really fun to hang out and work on those songs with him.

Patrick Hasson (04:54.668) Yeah. Yeah.

Patrick Hasson (05:00.864) Yeah, Nick's awesome. He was my neighbor for a while before I sold the Rainbow House, which is a whole nother story. But yeah, he's super cool guy. Love Nick. So, you know, I started coming to the desert and I don't know, I guess for some reason I thought I was gonna run into these guys and hang out, but I didn't. And I was never a musician. always...

Danny (05:18.871) Yeah.

Patrick Hasson (05:25.378) loved music and I was kind of in my head wanted to be a musician but I just I don't know it just never happened. So coming to Joshua Tree I just did that for years so living in LA I would come out to Joshua Tree and just hang in the park I didn't know anybody. So when my life was you know starting to fall apart in I guess it was like 2012 I started driving to the desert and one day I was like I wonder what a house costs out here and you know back then

Danny (05:31.864) Mm -hmm.

Danny (05:54.931) Right? Yeah.

Patrick Hasson (05:55.042) houses were 60 grand, you know? So I was like, you know, I wasn't thinking, you know, totally straight, but I was like, wow, man, you know, if I bought a house out here, I'd have a place to die. I mean, that's kind of what I thought. I was just like, because living in LA, you know, I would envision myself being like 65 and little shit apartment, not getting hired and it.

Danny (06:08.481) Yeah. Yeah.

Patrick Hasson (06:18.752) I just, so I did it. bought it and then I got sober and then it was like, what am I gonna do with this house? So I started coming out to the desert and like I said, it was a drug house. So I would be there, you know, two in the morning, ba ba ba. You know, like what the fuck? And I would come and it was some guy like, hey man, is Bob here? I'm like, no, Bob.

Bob's not here, and that happened a number of times. I was like, all right, I gotta change the mojo of this place. The house was covered shit brown, and I just was like, you know, I'm gonna paint it really bright, happy color so that people know this is not the drug house. So painted it bright orange, and then once you paint the outside bright orange and the inside's all crappy white, I just started painting, like one day was looking at a stop sign.

Danny (06:50.359) Yeah.

Danny (06:58.509) Mm -hmm.

Patrick Hasson (07:14.114) was like, I'm gonna paint this room like, you know, red. And then I was looking outside and there was like a yellow flower. I'm like, I'm gonna paint the kitchen yellow. So then all of a sudden, I went to art school way back in the day and I remember the color wheel, you know, you got blue, yellow, red, your primary. So I painted the primaries and then the three, the two bedrooms and the bathroom, I painted the secondary which was orange, green and purple.

Danny (07:27.628) Okay.

Patrick Hasson (07:44.206) And, you know, it was amazing. I had turned this really horrible house into something, you know, bright and colorful. And again, I didn't know what I was going to do with it. My neighbors were like, what the fuck? know, at the time when I came to the desert, everything was, you know, brown and white. You know, there I don't remember seeing a whole lot of color. So.

Danny (07:52.929) Yeah, yeah.

Patrick Hasson (08:11.714) In fact, I had one neighbor, he was like really upset. He's like, dude, your house looks like Sesame Street. I'm like, what's wrong with that? You know, I like Sesame Street. So I just, I heard about Airbnb and I put it on Airbnb and that really changed my life because people started renting it. I called the house Rancho El Reposo. You know, this is 2014. You know, I was just like, wow.

Danny (08:15.159) Yeah.

Danny (08:19.444) Ha ha

Danny (08:33.593) Wow.

Patrick Hasson (08:41.154) I'm making money, so for two years, I'm going back and...

Patrick Hasson -Joshua Tree Artist