Malcontent #7, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
About the Artist
Hannah Thomas (b.1972, UK) is an abstract painter whose work draws on the influence of artists such as Francis Bacon and HR Giger, as well as the films of David Lynch. Her large works are a combination of abstraction and biomorphic shapes that stem from ideas of Absurdism and personal freedom: a plea for release of one’s potency in a world that increasingly restricts and confines. She trained and worked as a photographer in London, specialising in music, for over a decade before shifting her focus to painting. Her move over to painting was primarily borne of a desire to work creatively in a fully autonomous way, with no rules; it was a space to be truly experimental. Her energetic paintings are an attempt to make tangible in a series of signature shapes and motifs, a view of human confusion and the multi layered nature of experience.
About the Artwork
Absurdity, disorder, insensate and disembodied forms constrained and fragmented in these two dimensional spaces. Hints of biomorphic form, curving shapes pressed together in enforced intimacy, stifled, encased in their tight little worlds emanating a wordless, formless desperation. These paintings were born of a desire to revert to a simpler, more totemic style to express a basic primordial desire for freedom and connection: for the release of one’s potency in a world that increasingly restricts and confines. It was the beginning of my use of larger blocks of colour, with hints of the layers beneath.