Hannah Maybank (born in

Stafford Stafford () is a market town and the county town of Staffordshire, in the West Midlands region of England. It lies about north of Wolverhampton, south of Stoke-on-Trent and northwest of Birmingham. The town had a population of 70,145 in t ...

1974) is a British artist best known for the ripped and distressed surfaces of her three-dimensional paintings in

acrylic Acrylic may refer to: Chemicals and materials * Acrylic acid, the simplest acrylic compound * Acrylate polymer, a group of polymers (plastics) noted for transparency and elasticity * Acrylic resin, a group of related thermoplastic or thermosett ...

. She graduated from an MA in Painting at the

Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design university in the United Kingdom. It offe ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, in 1999, following a

BA (Hons) Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

Fine Art from

Liverpool John Moores University , mottoeng = Fortune favours the bold , established = 1823 – Liverpool Mechanics' School of Arts1992 – Liverpool John Moores University , type = Public , endowment = , coor ...

. She lives and works in London.

Work

Maybank’s paintings contain elements from the natural world such as trees, flowers, clouds, and mountains. These natural elements are pared down to simple silhouette forms to act like motifs. Worked most often in

monochrome A monochrome or monochromatic image, object or palette is composed of one color (or values of one color). Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale (typically digital) or black-and-white (typically analog). In physics, monochrom ...

, these motifs or templates are repeated across the surface of the paintings to create a patterning in both the visual composition and through the process of their creation. Influenced from the mid-nineties by the works of

Imi Knoebel Imi Knoebel (/i:mi: kno:ʊbəl/) (born Klaus Wolf Knoebel; 1940) is a German artist. Knoebel is known for his minimalist, abstract painting and sculpture. The "Messerschnitt" or "knife cuts," are a recurring technique he employs, along with his ...

Agnes Martin Agnes Bernice Martin (March 22, 1912 – December 16, 2004), was an American abstract painter. Her work has been defined as an "essay in discretion on inward-ness and silence". Although she is often considered or referred to as a minimalist, Mart ...

and

Ad Reinhardt Adolph Dietrich Friedrich Reinhardt (December 24, 1913 – August 30, 1967) was an abstract painter active in New York for more than three decades. He was a member of the American Abstract Artists (AAA) and part of the movement centere ...

, Hannah Maybank uses both construction and destruction to create works which echo our relationship to time and the natural world. The cycles within life, both birth and decay, are reflected by the process in which her paintings are made: layers upon layers of

latex Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latexes are found in nature, but synthetic latexes are common as well. In nature, latex is found as a milky fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants (angiosperms ...

and acrylic paint are built up to be then stripped, cut and peeled away to reveal both the composition and lifespan of the piece. Starting out as a series of black

calligraphic Calligraphy (from el, link=y, καλλιγραφία) is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a pen, ink brush, or other writing instrument. Contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined as ...

like ink drawings, the composition of each painting is then pre-determined by a series of carefully worked, to-scale line drawings on layers of

tracing paper Tracing paper is paper made to have low opacity, allowing light to pass through. It was originally developed for architects and design engineers to create drawings that could be copied precisely using the diazo copy process; it then found ma ...

. Sometimes running to a twelve layered and exactly registered set of drawings, these plans are then transferred to the surface of the painting at their pre-designated stage. Success or failure is often granted at the final stages of the making of each piece. The exactitude of all of the drawings is then perversely handed over to chaos, as the surface is ripped, ruptured and sliced and the picture revealed.

Career

In February 2005, The New Art Gallery Walsall hosted Hannah Maybank’s first museum exhibition of paintings, including specially commissioned works such as ''Mounting Interference VI'', 2005. The gallery subsequently purchased for their permanent collection ''Hosts (II)'', 2004. In London’s ''Time Out'' magazine, in October 2005, at the time of her second solo show at Gimpel Fils, Martin Coomer wrote of the work:

“Most effective is a mountain range of triangular tears that discloses areas of yellow and orange, like molten ore beneath the earth’s crust. This is subtle and intelligent work; fluctuating between paint’s capacity for description and its presence as mere ‘stuff’, it appeals physically as well as mentally. The temptation to touch is as strong as the urge to pick a scab or strip bark from a silver birch.”

''Time Out'', London. Issue 1833, October 5–12, 2005. Martin Coomer During October to December 2007, Maybank was artist in residence at ArtSway in

The New Forest The New Forest is one of the largest remaining tracts of unenclosed pasture land, heathland and forest in Southern England, covering southwest Hampshire and southeast Wiltshire. It was proclaimed a royal forest by William the Conqueror, featu ...

. To be created especially for the ArtSway main gallery space, the

triptych A triptych ( ; from the Greek language, Greek adjective ''τρίπτυχον'' "''triptukhon''" ("three-fold"), from ''tri'', i.e., "three" and ''ptysso'', i.e., "to fold" or ''ptyx'', i.e., "fold") is a work of art (usually a panel painting) t ...

''Disclosure'', 2008—her largest painting to date—was commissioned. In April 2008 this piece was exhibited together with a number of other paintings, and for the first time a set of working shellac ink drawings. In September of the same year The Hatton Gallery,

Newcastle Newcastle usually refers to: *Newcastle upon Tyne, a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England *Newcastle-under-Lyme, a town in Staffordshire, England *Newcastle, New South Wales, a metropolitan area in Australia, named after Newcastle ...

, held a major overview of the artist’s practice. This exhibition also contained ''In Company'', 2008—created especially to be shown alongside

Kurt Schwitters Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters (20 June 1887 – 8 January 1948) was a German artist who was born in Hanover, Germany. Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including dadaism, constructivism, surrealism, poetry, sound, pain ...

's ''Merzbarn''—and her painting ''The Visit''—based upon

Ian Fleming Ian Lancaster Fleming (28 May 1908 – 12 August 1964) was a British writer who is best known for his postwar ''James Bond'' series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., a ...

’s ''The Garden of Gethsemane'', 1931, from the Hatton’s Historic collection. In June 2009, ''The Visit'', 2008, ''Carniferous Enclosure'', 2008 and ''The Penultimate Invitation'', 2009, were exhibited at the 53rd International Art exhibition –

la Biennale di Venezia The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

, 2009 as part of ''ArtSway’s New Forest Pavilion''. The accompanying exhibition catalogue included an essay on the artist’s work entitled ''Gathering Life'' written by the critic and poet Cherry Smyth. In 2010/11 she was one of two artists (the other being David Wightman) awarded a six-month residency as part of the Berwick Gymnasium Arts Fellowships in

Berwick-upon-Tweed Berwick-upon-Tweed (), sometimes known as Berwick-on-Tweed or simply Berwick, is a town and civil parish in Northumberland, England, south of the Anglo-Scottish border, and the northernmost town in England. The 2011 United Kingdom census recor ...

Northumberland Northumberland () is a county in Northern England, one of two counties in England which border with Scotland. Notable landmarks in the county include Alnwick Castle, Bamburgh Castle, Hadrian's Wall and Hexham Abbey. It is bordered by land on ...

References

*''ArtSway’s New Forest Pavilion: a collateral event of the 53rd international art exhibition- la biennale di venezia'', ArtSway and text +work (The Arts Institute at Bournemouth), 2009, illustrated catalogue featuring an essay on Hannah Maybank by Cherry Smyth. (ArtSway) / (text+work, the Arts Institute at Bournemouth) *''Hannah Maybank'', ArtSway 2008, exhibition catalogue with essay by Katie Pratt.
Gimpel Fils

External links

www.gimpelfils.com www.artsway.org.uk www.hannahmaybank.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Maybank, Hannah Living people English women painters Alumni of the Royal College of Art 1974 births English contemporary artists People from Stafford 21st-century British women artists 21st-century English painters 21st-century English women 20th-century English women 20th-century English people

Work

Career

Further reading

References

External links