About the Artist
Kenneth J. Hale was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but grew up in the
San Francisco Bay Area. He attended Foothill Junior College receiving an
A.A. degree, then California State University Long Beach receiving a B.A.
in Printmaking and followed by his M.F.A. in Lithography at the University
of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.
In 1973 Hale began teaching Lithography in the Department of Art and
Art History at The University of Texas at Austin. In 1979 he established
and directed the Guest Artist in Printmaking Program, a collaborative based
educational program that invited established artists to create
editions with the assistance of faculty and students. A partial list of
invited artists includes Garo Antreason, Karl Wirsum, Judith Linhares,
Roger Herman, Melissa Miller, Robert Wilson, Luis Jimenez, Eric Avery,
Jane Abrams, June Wayne, James Surls, Armando Morales and Vernon
Fisher.
During Hale’s tenure at the University of Texas he received numerous
university research and travel awards and in 1990 he received a Mid-
America Arts Alliance National Endowment Fellowship in Painting. While at
The University of Texas at Austin Hale served as Chair of the Department
of Art and Art History for nine years and as the Senior Associate Dean for
Academic Affairs for the College of Fine Arts for six years. In 2013 Hale
retired from the university holding the title of the Marguerite Fairchild
Professor Emeritus in Art.
Internationally and nationally Hale has had over two dozen solo exhibitions
and over 150 group exhibitions in public, educational and commercial
venues such as the Dallas Museum of Art in Dallas, Texas; the McNay
Museum of Art in San Antonio, Texas; the Krannert Museum of Art at the
University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana; Space Gallery in Los Angeles,
California; the American Cultural Center in Madrid, Spain; the Silom Art
Space in Bangkok, Thailand; the McKinney Avenue Contemporary in Dallas,
Texas; Flatbed Press in Austin, Texas; and the William Campbell
Contemporary Art Gallery in Fort Worth, Texas.
Hale’s prints and drawings are represented in collections such as the
Artist Printmaker Research Collection at the Museum of Texas Tech
University in Lubbock, Texas; the Smithsonian American Art Museum,
Washington DC; the Achenbach Foundation, San Francisco, California; the
Atlantic Richfield Collection; the American Airlines Collection, Austin,
Texas; the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas; the Art Institute of
Chicago in Chicago, Illinois; the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in Boston,
Massachusetts; and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in Fort Worth,
Texas.
Currently Hale and his wife, Mona, live in Carmel Valley, California where he continues to produce his art.