Chris Hagebak is an award-winning generalist artist who specializes in portraiture and Japanese arts.  He has become internationally known for his coffee portraits, which are uncommonly popular and have been exhibited worldwide.  Chris has had numerous museum and gallery exhibitions, including both group and solo exhibits.

      He has exhibited four times at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum and seven times at the National Art Center Tokyo. He was the featured artist at a portraiture exhibition at LaGrange Art Museum in 2016, and his coffee portraiture was featured at the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York in 2017 and 2019.  He has been a featured artist at the London Coffee Festival three times, and worked closely with exhibition organizers for the 2019 Twitter Art Exhibition in Edinburgh, Scotland, where one of his coffee portraits was also featured, earning him a Board member Choice award.  He is a guest artist for Salon Blanc, the Franco-Japanese art association, and in 2023 became the only American to ever be presented the Salon Blanc Honorary Chairman’s Award.  He is an annual participant in the Art Beyond Boundaries exhibition at the National Art Center Tokyo, where he has earned two International Honor and three International Friendship awards for his sumi-e work.  In 2022, Chris and five of his students were featured artists at the Shirataka Cultural Exchange Center Museum of Art for work which emphasized Japanese cultural significance.  In 2021, works by Chris and his assistant Isabel were featured at Gallery Akatsuki in Ginza, Tokyo.  His work hangs in galleries and homes in 27 nations worldwide.

      Although primarily known for his watercolour and coffee portraiture, Chris works in a variety of media, including oil, acrylic, sumi-e, sculpture, printmaking, stained glass, ceramics, batik and other fabric arts.  His work has been used as cover art for two books and several monthly periodicals.  He is also a respected art restorer who has worked with museums and private collectors to restore works by such well-known artists as Warhol, Dodd, Rockmore, Braque and Gilot.  He has also done restoration work for the British Museum in London.

      In 2014, Chris was called upon to teach art at an orphanage in rural Zambia in southern Africa.  Children from neighboring villages walked miles to the orphanage to learn art techniques; on his first full day at the orphanage, Chris taught 215 Zambian children, most of whom had never before been exposed to art.

      Chris makes his home in LaGrange, Georgia, where he is manager of 809 Gallery of Art, a gallery specializing in commissioned work and art education. Over the years, he has taught thousands of children and adults a wide variety of techniques and media.  He has served as manager of 809 Gallery for eighteen years.