Stephen Hannock's formal artistic training began at Bowdoin and led him to participate in the Twelve College Exchange, where at Smith College he came under the influence of Leonard Baskin, the renowned sculptor, illustrator, printmaker, and graphic artist. Hannock is deeply influenced by the great American landscape painters of the nineteenth century, especially Thomas Cole, whose sweeping vistas of rugged Eastern terrain were imbued with a sense of the romantic and the sublime. Hannock's dramatic neo-Luminist paintings have been featured in numerous national publications and museum collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego.