Patric Hanley is a New York City-based artist specializing in oil paintings. His exclusive collaboration with Filson draws influence from Midwestern roots, featuring motifs inspired by classic American fauna. We caught up at his studio to learn about his craft and the creation of the Filson limited-edition Rugged Twill bags.
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Growing up in rural Ohio, Patric Hanley’s weekends were filled with “hard work that wasn’t necessarily fun,” he remembers. After traveling the western United States as a child, following his father who worked in the logging industry, he and his family settled on a small area of forested land that would become the tree nursery. It was surrounded by cornfields and Amish farmland.
Alongside their work ethic, an artistic streak runs in the Hanley kin—a streak that became evident in Patric as well.
As Patric pursued his painting and life on the land, he drifted between two worlds. At school, the other kids didn’t do the kind of work he did on the weekends or have Amish kids come over for visits. At home, his older brother Peter persuaded him to apply for his first hunting license when he was in the sixth grade. And when out in the woods or out gigging for frogs, there too Patric remembers that he never fully appreciated the moments when his mind was “floating”. His artistic passion continued into college, after which he took a job in Ohio with a noted luxury brand. It was there that he discovered the history of painting luggage, especially trunks but other luggage items as well, that he’s now carrying forward in his collaboration with Filson.
“It goes back to the 1800s when people traveled by steamship,” he says. “The trunks had lettering or insignia, or even a stripe, to make them identifiable when they came off the ship.” This craft continues to this day and one that brought him to New York, where he’s worked for a roster of top clientele, some famous and some discreet. But after arriving and enjoying all the opportunities and things he loves about the city, he started to realize what he missed. Working in his studio in an industrial section of Brooklyn, the sound of woodworking and metalwork reminded him that the ethos of hard manual work is alive and well in the city, just like in Ohio. But it was those moments out in the woods with his brother that he missed. Eventually, that longing inspired him to create new images and artwork, inspired by two different worlds.
“Growing up and seeing the mallards, the fish, the deer on the wall—it’s the kind of nostalgic imagery that got me excited to put it on bags that look great in the city, just as they do in the country.”
Looking out over the New York City skyline, the personalization of these bags for Filson reminds Patric of those old steamer trunks, where you couldn’t get an insignia unless it truly represented what you stood for. “It’s something that you can keep, to remind you and others of who you are and what you care about, even if you can’t be around it all the time.”
