Hannah Benassi

My current collection responds to my recent travels around Portugal, where I spent the summer completing my first residency in Barreiro, before working on a new body of paintings in Lisbon. Absorbing rich textures, pastel colours and the warm summer glow, each work offers the viewer abstracted moments from my travels as I capture quiet sunsets, vertical viewpoints and temporary forms through eroding textures and faded tones.

 

My practice explores intuitive layering of materials through painting. Working primarily with acrylic, my work incorporates printed collage, clay, oil bar, cloth and pasted papers to create structural forms in soft settings. Whilst abstract, my paintings display subtle washes of colour, scratched surfaces and patchwork constructions, inspired by shifting shades and shadows of daylight and organic qualities in human-made landscapes. My creative process evolves from unlocking subconscious memories of natural and architectural details and making use of cut-offs and pre-made paint colours to inform a new artwork. I construct these reflections and collected materials onto the surface by combining intuitive and selective methods of painterly collage, creating a subtle balance between density and transparency