About Hank Grebe

Hank Grebe is a painter, photographer and multimedia visual artist born 1952 in New York, NY and grew up on Long Island, NY (Port Washington, Smithtown and Setauket). He is the grandson of Alfred H. Grebe, a pioneering radio manufacturer and founder of New York City's first radio station, WCBS radio. Hank's work has been influenced by the arts and media of New York, and the beauty of Long Island's scenic beaches and wetlands. His work reflects a love of humor and the mysteries of spiritual realms.

Hank studied drawing, painting and art history at Cornell University (1970-71), The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1971-74), and University of Wisconsin-Madison (1979-83). As a young painter in the 70's and 80's, Hank's focused on photo-realism and surrealism. In the mid-70's, Hank lived at a beach house on Cedar Beach, and enjoyed a productive time painting while managing a movie theater in Port Jefferson Station at night.

In Boston, Hank worked with Steven Lisberger on Cosmic Cartoon, a traditional cel animated 16mm film. Later, Lisberger wrote and directed TRON, and Hank researched computer graphics techniques at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. At that time (1980), computer art programs were too new for colleges to support, and had to be developed by innovative students. Also at Wisconsin, Hank studied serigraphy (fine art silk screening) with his MFA advisor, Dean Meeker, a pioneering Guggenheim Fellow in the field of print making and graphic arts.

Grebe left UW's MFA program in 1983 to work professionally in computer animation at New York Institute of Technology's Computer Graphics Lab in Old Westbury, NY. Hank animated the first 3D Gumby character, created animation for Devo, Yoko Ono, Kraftwerk, New York's Palladium video wall, and directed post-production of NYIT-CGL animation projects.

As a photographer, Hank began shooting, processing and printing black and white photographs in high school. His photos of the rock scene of the 70's and 80's U2, R.E.M., The Replacements, Captain Beefheart and punk scene have appeared in books, album covers and film documentaries.

In 1992 Hank organized, wrote and edited the course material for a SIGGRAPH conference course presented in Chicago, Interactive Multimedia Authoring & Publishing, and presented the course at InterCHI Amsterdam in 1993.

From 1995 to 2014, Hank made his living in digital graphics, 3D computer animation and interactive design, while still working on paintings and collages in his free time. Hank led a digital painting team on DreamWorks' SHREK 2 full length animated feature, enhancing the computer animation and effects for the final release print. His 3D computer generated illustrations and photographs are represented by Adobe Stock and Getty Images/iStock stock image agencies.

Today Hank is happy to find more time for oil painting using traditional brushes and materials. He is working on expanding upon a number of themes that he found very successful in the past.