Haaning was born in 1945 in Copenhagen, Denmark. After graduating from high school he joined the merchant marine. Later he studied art, literature, drama, and philosophy at Askov Hojskole ("one of the absolute high points in my life.") Major influences at that time were: Van Gogh, smoke rings, old boots, his mutilated ear bandaged; Edvard Munch's Scream and The Sick Child; and Kandinsky, his abstractions and thoughts in precise hues. By the time he left Denmark CoBrA, especially the painter Asger Jorn, profoundly influenced him. His leaning has been and is toward the surreal, dada, and the raw/self taught. Haaning hitchhiked through Europe and came to the United States in 1966. "I came to see the Dali retrospective in New York, to be close to the epicenter of The New York School and hear the Beats read." 

He became a permanent resident in 1969 and settled on the West coast. He worked in the Mental health field, and furthered his studies which resulted in a Master's Degree in Psychology. He has taught at several colleges in the Human Services field. He has lived in San Pedro, Laguna Beach and now resides in Tahoe Vista, California. 

In the last 30 years he has added photography to his visual interest and out-put. 

Haaning works in several distinct styles. What he calls Nordic Expressionism is one - both figurative and abstract. Nordic is for the place of his formative memories and influences, and Expressionism is for the manner of execution. In the abstract field, he has developed a distinct vision he terms Abstract Surrealism. Second, Neo-pristine Edge he coined to distinguish his technique from that of the hard edge school; both techniques require distinct, separate color spaces. 

To accomplish these means, he works primarily with oil on canvas and oil on paper. In photography he works with hand painted prints, straight photographic prints, and photographic images on archival watercolor paper. Haaning also works with found objects in three and two-dimensional expressions. 

"Children's art, projective drawings, and the self-taught/outsider art have had the strongest and most profound influence on me, both aesthetically and philosophically."