Hannah Thomas
Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire
Semi Abstract Artist based in Wiltshire, UK. Bold, experimental, large scale paintings fuelled by existential concerns.
Message(b. 1973 Reading) Hannah Thomas is a painter, she graduated from University of the West of England with a BA hons in Art and Visual Culture in 2000.
Initially pursuing a career as a professional photographer she lived and worked in London for over a decade, mostly working within the music industry.
Hannah is currently a finalist in the Dubel Prize: Emerging Artist of the Year, and recently had a solo show with Red Eight Gallery in London highlighting her recent work.
Her work has also been included in recent group shows in London with AucArt, SOTA, Candid Arts Trust and Visual Artists Association.
Hannah won the VAA Scholarship Award last year and has recently been longlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize 2024. Her work is included in private and corporate collections in the UK and Internationally.
She is participating in the correspondence course with Turps Art School in London to further develop her studio practice.
She is currently based in Wiltshire, UK.
Statement
My large, bold abstract paintings probe ideas of the absurd and the macabre, combining emotional expressionistic mark making and musings on fundamental existential dilemmas.
Due in part to my participation in Turps Art School’s Correspondence Course, my practice is evolving fast, moving away slightly from the bold colour blocks and more illustrative style that has dominated my practice for the last couple of years. I work mainly with acrylics, indian ink and oil pastels.
My paintings are a celebration of the ‘other’, often populated by motifs that reference the figurative or biological, indicating the presence of a creature or life form representing the savage, the outsider, the disturber of the status quo and existing outside of the social and political culture and in spite of it. I am segueing into using more transparency and a darker palette and have been referencing elements of deep sea life and the natural world where some of the most macabre and fantastic life forms emerge from the eternal darkness of great depths.
My work references a wide mix of visual cues, from primitive figurative art to H R Giger and Francis Bacon, the natural world and the cinema of David Lynch and David Cronenberg.
All images © Copyright Hannah Thomas 2024