Hannah’s paintings and drawings are the joyous outpourings of moments created and selected during the painful collective experience of the pandemic. She immersed herself in a self-exploratory journey celebrating the fun, beauty and joy of everyday moments, elevating the ordinary and viewing it through the lens of the extraordinary, the figurative and expressive, in energetic layers of vibrant colour and through a multitude of drawings. The moments she chooses become visible and are an emotional response to her environment, created in isolation they are for sharing and lifting spirits. Moments that would otherwise be passed by if time was not taken to acknowledge the simple beauty and interest within. These paintings are explorations in themselves, Hannah has no clear vision of the outcome from the instant when the paint is placed on the surface of the paper or canvass, to when the painting reaches a point when it is time to put paintbrushes down.
She celebrates her immediate environment, objects and scenes that can be found within her four walls. More recently she has resourced other locations and has expanded into the local park and green areas surrounding outer London as well as working in a local life drawing studio. She is guided by the emotive reaction to her subject and the process and the materials she uses such as, charcoal, Indian ink, water colour crayons, washes, conte and acrylics.
The artist
Hannah is a local visual artist. This solo exhibition is her first, and the artworks in this exhibition are from when her practise began during lockdown. She has lived in Willesden Green since the 1980s, bringing up a family whilst working in the East End. Growing up in Portugal has influenced Hannah’s work. She drew and painted from early on in her life, encouraged and inspired by the artist community that lived there. In her 20s she completed a Foundation course at Chelsea School of Art. The pandemic provided Hannah with an opportunity to throw herself back into painting again. She started attending an art studio in Ladbroke Grove when lockdown came to an end, run by a teacher from Royal School of Art. She has not stopped creating since then.
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Instagram: @hannahahmed399