Rising Stars: Meet Patrick Hasson of Joshua Tree

Today we’d like to introduce you to Patrick Hasson.

Hi Patrick, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Okay…so, long story (sorta) short…went to University of South Florida as a Fine Arts Major…had a drawing teacher who told me that I was a horrible drawer and a career as an artist probably wasn’t the best idea. With my 20-year-old confidence crushed, I took an experimental cinematography class, dug it, then pursued filmmaking for the next 20 years. Moved to LA, wrote and directed a few features, had a modicum of success, but eventually my alcoholism and drug addictions got the best of me and the wheels fell off. Spent 30 days in a rehab, got sober, then realized I could no longer function in the toxic world of Hollywood (and in my day job, video editing porn for Playboy). I was 43 years old and had no clue on what my next step was, so I bought a little, beat-up drug house in Joshua Tree (a place I had been visiting for years) for $73,000. To stop the tweakers from banging on my door late at night, I painted the house’s brown exterior neon orange and the visits stopped. My neighbors didn’t know what to make of this blast of color, but it stirred something deep inside me. I was amazed at the transformational power of color and how this simple coat of paint changed the entire energy of the house. Thinking about the ‘color wheel’ I learned back in college, I decided to paint the living room cherry red, the kitchen yellow, the living room deep blue, the bathroom lime green, and the two small bedrooms orange and purple. Because I was still living in LA, I thought maybe I could rent the house to bring in some money and a friend told me about Airbnb. I called the house “Rancho El Reposo – Livable Art Retreat” and posted it on Airbnb. Then…my life changed. My rainbow-colored house became a hit on Airbnb and I was driving out to Joshua Tree several times a week to get the house ready for guests. By 2016, I was making enough money that I was able to purchase another property for $105,000 and spent the next 4 months painting the interior rainbow colors and the exterior purple and red (even painted the roof red with red and purple stripes). I called it Rancho De Colores and put it on Airbnb. This livable art retreat was even more popular, so I popped a little trailer at the edge of the property and moved to the desert full time. I spent the next 2 years living in the trailer as my airbnb business grew, but something inside was gnawing at me. I wanted to give art another shot, even if I was a bad drawer. I started buying little $10 guitars down at the Olvera Street mall in LA and splashing them (a la Jackson Pollock) with the 6 colors of house paint I had lying around. They were beautiful and I started selling them at my airbnbs. There was something about those 6 colors…those 6 colors of the rainbow…that I found absolutely perfect and became obsessed with. One day I got enough courage to buy a canvas from Walmart and attempt a painting. Staring at the blank canvas, the fears rushed back to me…I was no artist. I had no ability. I was a bad drawer and had no business trying to be an artist. And then, for whatever reason, I painted the canvas black. Suddenly, that fear of a blank canvas was gone and I began splattering the different colors onto the black canvas and before I knew it there was a rainbow-colored palm tree on fire on the canvas, an image I had seen years back while living in LA. It was really how I felt about Los Angeles…this beautiful place that seemed to burning on all sides. I really liked the painting, so I hung it in one of my airbnbs and by the next weekend, I guest had inquired about purchasing it. Maybe I could be an artist? Fuck that professor and his judgement on a 20-year-old ball of clay who knew nothing. And so I painted. And painted. One day while living in the trailer, I noticed the ugly linoleum floor and wondered if I could paint it. Now, I certainly couldn’t splatter house paint all over it, so I got the idea to put each color into a plastic squeeze bottle. I then squeezed a glob of blue on the floor, then green, then yellow, etc. Before I knew it, the floor was a mosaic of color, and I got the idea to take a house nail and run it through the different globs of paint. Because it was house paint, the colors moved and shapes began to form, but the colors didn’t mix together. This was a lightbulb moment for me. I wanted to make a painting with this technique…a technique I would later dub as ‘dripping.’ Yes, it was similar to Pollock’s drip technique, but different. It was my own. I then began painting with that technique and wanted to attempt a portrait. I starting working with the amazing Joshua Tree Music Festival after meeting its founder, Barnett English. I could get a free ticket to the festival if I painted an 8ft x 6ft painting for the fest. Again, I was filled with doubt that I could paint a portrait, but eventually said ‘fuck it’ and decided to paint a portrait of one of my favorite desert musicians, Gabriella Evaro. I spent a week on it and then brought it to the festival. To my relief, people liked it, so I my next obsession became doing a portrait series of some of my favorite Desert Rock musicians and the idea for DESERT DUDES was born. I spent the next year painting portraits of Mario Lalli, Chris Goss, Brant Bjork, Dave Catching, Jesika Von Rabbit, Josh Homme, and many more. Michael McCall, the curator of the Yucca Valley Visual & Performing Arts Center, came to visit my studio one day and loved what I was doing, so he gave me my own show in the Fall of 2019. I really couldn’t believe it. The show was a big hit and for the first time, I felt like I really was an artist. A painter. But the best part was when Mario Lalli came to the show and saw all the portraits of people he had been playing with for years. He then did something that I will cherish for the rest of my years…he got together eight of the musicians from the Desert Dudes series to do an improv jam at the closing party of the show. The legendary Hutch did the sound and Mario, Gary Arce, Chris Goss, Gene Trautmann, Dave Catching, Arthur Seay, Jesika Von Rabbit, and Sean Wheeler jammed it out at the closing party. It absolutely blew my mind. But, before I could start on my next portrait series, the pandemic hit and I moved back into Rancho El Reposo because I could no longer live in the trailer. Isolated and feeling the world was coming to an end, I decided to repaint the house and call it THE RAINBOW HOUSE. I had no idea this endeavor would take 2 years (because of a serious back injury), but I painted every inch of that house in rainbow colors which kept my mind off the pandemic madness. By 2022, the world had opened up back up and I started renting The Rainbow House on airbnb, where it became an instant hit. By 2023, I had been doing airbnb for 9 years non-stop and was totally burnt out. My body was falling apart and I could no longer keep up with the grind. I put the Rainbow House up for sale and soon a lovely couple from Long Beach purchased it. It was bittersweet selling this livable work of art, but the sale afforded me the opportunity to become a full-time artist, something that I longed for for many years. Right after the sale, 2 different television shows contacted me about shooting the Rainbow House, so I contacted the new owners and suddenly the Rainbow House was on HGTV’s ZILLOW GONE WILD and the Design Network’s ALT HOME. This brought a bit of closure to me knowing that the world could now see the 2 years of work put into The Rainbow House. Moving back into Rancho De Colores, I spent the next year painting my second portrait series ‘1969,’ which featured many of the musicians that made 1969 one of the greatest years in music history. I painted Hendrix, The Beatles, Joni Mitchell, Led Zeppelin, Janis Joplin, Nina Simone, Frank Zappa, and many others. The show opened in Yucca Valley & Los Angeles and the feedback was wonderful. I was now 53 years old and a full time artist. Instead of letting my life burn up in flames like that palm tree in Los Angeles I witnessed many years ago, I started my life over in the desert and I couldn’t be more grateful. I then spent the last 8 months repainting Rancho De Colores and turning it into RAINBOWLAND…a rainbow-colored Roadside Attraction, Art Gallery, Art Park, Event Space, and eventually, Artist Retreat. I was lucky enough to team up with local artist Ron Therrio & low-desert sculptor, Steve Webster, who created the 9ft tall, 18 ft wide, 1100lbs metal rainbow which now sits at the front of my property right off Highway 62 in Joshua Tree. It is a tribute to the desert artists that inspired me so deeply on my desert sojourns years before I would ever buy property here…Noah Purifoy, Leonard Knight, Bobby Furst, Ricardo Breceda, Shari Elf, Randy Polumbo, and so many more. We’ll be having the official Grand Opening of Rainbowland early next year. It is my hope that Rainbowland will become part of the artistic landscape of the Mojave Desert and bring inspiration to those seeking something magic like I found many years ago.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’m known for my Psychedelic Pop (Art) portraits of musicians using my ‘dripping’ technique, my Mojave Dreamscape landscapes, and for my Rainbow-Colored, Livable Art Retreats (Rainbowland, The Rainbow House). All of my art infuses rainbows into everything I do. I’m most proud of the DESERT DUDES series because it was the first art series I ever did and I proved to myself that I am an artist (and a painter).

Any big plans?
I plan on having the Grand Opening of Rainbowland early in 2026 and then slowly grow it into a popular roadside attraction; an artistic landmark in the Mojave. I’m also planning to start hosting art shows and various events here, collaborating with local creatives of all types. In the same way Rancho De La Luna (the world-famous recording studio in Joshua Tree) has been a home for some of the most incredible music created in the last 30 years, I would love for Rainbowland to become a creative space where some of the most unique & diverse desert art is created and shown for all to enjoy. I’m also very excited about the RAINBOWMAN documentary that’s currently being shot about the creation of Rainbowland. I’m co-directing and co-producing the project with a first-time, Nigerian director and I think it will be a very unique film about the power of creativity and independent thinking in this age of social media and AI.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.patrickhasson.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/patrickhasson/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/patrick.hasson.77/
• Twitter: https://x.com/PatrickHasson
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@mrpatrick1069
• Yelp: https://www.tiktok.com/@viciouscolor
• soundcloud: https://linktr.ee/patrickhasson77
• Other: https://www.instagram.com/rainbowlandjt/

Image Credits
Photos by Sandra Goodin & Patrick Hasson