Hannah Benassi b.1997 is an Edinburgh-based contemporary painter. Benassi graduated with First Class (BA) Hons in Fine Art & Design from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in 2019 and completed her MA in Contemporary Curatorial Practice with distinction at Glasgow School of Art in 2020. Awarded the Farquhar Reid Trust Prize for her innovative use of mediums and named a Saatchi Art Rising Star, her work has since gained international attention. Exhibited across the UK, Portugal, and China, notable shows include her solo exhibitions ‘ANGELUS’ with ARCH Gallery in Changsha, China, and ‘Crafting Identities’ with luxury accessories brand Strathberry.
Working primarily in painting and mixed media, Benassi’s work is an abstracted response to the places she has explored, capturing the atmosphere, colour palette, and passing qualities of time from international travels to moments immersed in the shifting moods of the Scottish Highlands. These landscapes take shape through an intuitive process, where she layers acrylic, clay, calico, rice paper and oil paint to convey movements of nature and structural details to guide the composition of each work. Balancing the qualities of density with transparency, her paintings evoke the interplay between place and memory.